German Marine-Schiffspost Card

I haven't posted anything from my collection for awhile, so here's a little show-and-tell -- the German Marine-Schiffspost Postal Stationery of 1897-1899.

From June 1897 to 30 April 1899, a 10 Pf postcard overprinted "Nur für Marine-Schiffsposten" (Only for Navy Ship Post) was available for use by crews of German naval vessels. It catalogs in Michel and Einfeldt as MSP P1, and in Borek as MSP 1.



There were three printings of the MSP card -- March 1897, July 1897, and July 1898. The printing date and paper supplier are reflected at the bottom right of each card. In the above example, it's July 1898 and paper supplier "f" as denoted by the "798f". The Germans also used a complex system to denote printing date and how many times the plate had been used by omitting dots from the address lines. In this case, there' a dot missing from the fourth line 30 points from the left, indicating the July 1898 printing date and the first run with this plate.

At the time, the cancellers carried by German naval vessels were of an identical design, but each with a unique MSP number. A ship could carry the same canceller (and therefore the same MSP number) for years or for only a single voyage. However, there are excellent resources available that list the dates and locations of each ship/canceller, allowing a collector to pinpoint the ship and its location simply by the cancel. For example...



This MSP card carries an MSP No. 16 cancel dated 21 March 1898. At that time, No. 16 was assigned to the training ship SMS Charlotte which, on 21 March, was in Dartmouth, England.



This MSP card carries an MSP No. 40 cancel dated 28 December 1897. At that time, No. 40 was assigned to the cruiser SMS Deutschland, which was off Gibraltar en route to the East Asia Squadron.



This MSP card is a rare one. For the first several months in which the MSP cards were available, the fleet did not yet have the circular cancellers, so postal clerks onboard resorted to handwritten cancels. This cancel states "Von der Marine-Schiffspost Nr. 10 ungestempelt beim Marine-Postbüro eingegangen. 26/8 8 V" (received uncancelled by the Navy Post Office of MSP No. 10). At that time, No. 10 was assigned to the cruiser SMS Condor, which was in Dar-es-Salaam, German East Africa from 29 Jun-11 Sep 1897.

Prior to arriving at the final design of the MSP card, several essays were produced testing different fonts and different placements of the overprint. There are 24 known essay designs. I've managed to find 11 of those.

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing it.

By all means, share!

I have so much to learn. Thanks for sharing!

A nice new addition to my MSP collection today.

In 1877, Germany began construction of a naval hospital in Yokohama, Japan. The hospital opened for patients on 1 July 1878. It was built on a prominent bluff in the foreign settlement area of Yokohama.

The hospital had rooms for 4 first-class, 3 second-class, and 48 third-class patients. It was used to treat primarily German army and navy personnel, but also saw patients who were German civilians or foreign nationals. During its lifetime, it would see 3,357 patients. Additionally, during the Boxer Rebellion (1900-01), a convalescent home was added to the hospital.

On 31 December 1911, after only 33 years of service, the hospital was closed. The expansion of facilities in the German leasehold at Kiauchau (Tsingtao), China, had rendered the Yokohama facility unnecessary.

Thought MSP postcards were intended for use solely on ships of the German navy, they could also be used at the Yokohama Naval Hospital. The Hospital MSP cancel is the only MSP cancel with the name on it -- all the shipboard cancellers used numbers.

You seem to be an expert about Schiffspost. Can you tell me the information about the route of the marine Schiffspost 38 and 40 in southeast Asia during 1898? Were they really in hong kong on Christmas day 1898?

joseph,

I have the references to look those up for you, but I won't have access to them for several months. Let me ask a few other folks I know who might be able to look them up.

many thanks to you

By the way, are there any books discussing the history of german marine schiffspost or postoffic in china?

joseph,

There is one MSP book that is the gold standard -- Pohlmann & Kessing's Handbuch und Katalog der deutschen Marine-Schiffspost und Marinepost 1895-1914. It's in German, but it has a detailed history of the MSP and of each MSP number's usage (it's the reference I need to lookup your previous questions).

The German Offices in China is a more complicated topic. As far as I know, there isn't a single, comprehensive book that thoroughly addresses the topic, though there are several smaller works that address different aspects. Is the something in particular you're looking for?

But I cannot read German.Actually I have bought 2 german postal cards on ebay, one with chops marked marine schiffspost 38 and the other marked 40. They were both written on December 24, 1989 in hong kong. I wonder if they came from 2 different ships that were both stayed in hongkong at that time. I know nothing about the history of marine schiffspost. Can you help me to find out the truth?

Sorry, it should be the year 1898

At that time, MSP 38 was used by the cruiser SMS Gefion and MSP 40 was used by the cruiser SMS Deutschland.

Though I don't have the references to be 100% sure, it's entirely possible both were in Hong Kong on that date. As part of the German East Asia Squadron, they were based out of Kiauchau (Tsingtao), China, and while part of the Squadron was in the Philippines in late 1898, both SMS Gefion and SMS Deutschland remained in Chinese waters.

Thank you so much for your information. By the way, is there any other english version of the history of the marine cruiser?

Not that I'm aware of.

How about web information? Are there any website saying the history of marine crusier?

I have post the image of one of my cards on the topic"German Schiffspost". Please comment on it. Is it rare or not?