Southampton France Mb 1914 Cancel

Being unfamilar with French cancels, can someone help explain this 1914 cancel and, in particular, what "MB" may mean?



Thanks.

A "moveable box" cancel, in French boite mobile. Boxes onboard ships used for posting mail, through a special agreement between France and Britain. Google will turn up lots of interesting information on these, far more than can be summarized here. Your looks like type MB3 or MB3a.

Thanks for the response. Very interesting info. I'll have to google search it further. All that my initial search for "MB" brought up was "megabyte"; and all my search for "Southampton" brought up was England and not France.

It is a very nice piece...I like it a lot.

Actually, I have the entire cover, I just cropped the postmark to highlight it for my question:



I also did some more research and found this example of the postmark shown, which, if this is accurate, leads me to believe its a MB3a:

Goodness me, that's gorgeous.
I have a severe case of jealousy.
That cover is a doozy,
care to share how many sheckles it cost?

In two parts, so that you can read
it with the 90Kb restriction:

acknowledgement : Australian Stamp News 1984

Thanks, Rod222, for the article on the Mobile Box. It will make an interesting addition to the cover I scanned.

Actually, I stumbled across this cover quite by accident just today amongst a accumulation of about 200 or so covers that were given to me some years ago. If you're interested, here's the story (I'll try and be brief):

Several years ago I was given a box of seemingly plain covers primarily from two individuals (later husband and wife) that date from pre-WWI (about 1914, I think is the earliest) through to the 1930's. The parties involved had written back and forth (in some cases, several times a week) for a few decades. They both attained minor "celebrity" status (or perhaps more appropriately, major "society" status) as many of the covers, although plain, had return addresses from luxury hotels, or return addresses and/or introduction cards from the likes of prominent people such as artists (i.e. McMein), high society (i.e. the "Vanderbilts" of Newport, RI) etc., with US postmarks from Florida, Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts, with a number of the WWI-era covers from overseas countries of France, Italy and England. Mixed in are a couple of Paquebot covers (this MB one for example, may qualify as being in that status) and several pneumatic mail covers from Paris (or in the French language "pneumatique"). In fact, I understand one of the parties had geneaology dating back to Napoleon, had worked for the American Field Service in France and American Fund for French Wounded, and later became a minor actress and author in her day; with the other having a fine war record and finally being part of General Patton's staff and later a prominent US lawyer.

Everytime I look up the parties or the hotels or the resident addresses used on the envelopes, I come up with a web history of high society personalities or stationery used from exclusive mansions, clubs, hotels, ships or vacation retreats geared toward the well-to-do.

It's an intersting mix to say the least and as many times as I go through the lot, I come up with new material as I learn what to look for (much to the thanks of reading posts from SCF members on this forum.)

Well I can say the collection is in good hands
with a fine researcher.
Just make sure all your research is recorded
and not lost when the next caretaker
has the collection :)

Rod222: Thanks for the kind words. As I go through and uncover interesting pieces of this collection, I often printout the data and put it in a page protector with the cover so I keep the history together. In fact, I'm printing out this thread and keeping it with the cover I first scanned. I find it to be the best way to keep the history together with the piece and not lose it, forget about it, or even bury it in layers of computer files that would have to be uncovered later on.

Please allow me to bump an old thread again... I came across a mysterious '..thampton MB' cancel myself today which made me think - but google led me to this thread. Very happy to find that all my queries are already answered by Cjd and Rod222. Thanks, excellent information

wt1 - obviously needless to say - your cover is simply awesome I totally understand rods feeling when stating