Bermuda Special Delivery

I ran across a post of yours from a year or so ago with a cover sent from Bermuda containing a US Special Delivery stamp. I collect such usages and would be interested in the cover if you still have it. Prior to agreements covering Special Delivery reciprocity, the only way to receive special delivery service was to place U.S. postage on the envelope and mark it Special Delivery. Similar covers also exist to receive U.S. airmail service once the letter arrived in the U.S.

Hi UsedUS and welcome to SCF. I still have the cover and sent you an email through the system. Please be sure to introduce yourself and be sure to post some of your items in other threads.

Just goes to show what a properly titled thread will do. Someone finds it in a google search 1 year after the original post and joins the site to answer a thread, Kudos to you Partime.

The "via Lisbonne Clipper" marking is very common. During the late 1930s and early 1940s when you were sending something via either trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific air mail you could specify which route by this method. You see these notations that are either hand written or typed like this and they normally mention the name of the Pan American Airlines flying boat that were called Clippers that was running that particular route. It is parallel to the kinds of handwritten notations you see on such covers from the 1800s where people often wrote "via USS xxxxx" where they put the name of the ship on which they wanted their mail to go to ensure fastest and most reliable delivery.

I think that Cjd is correct that a company, such as this Bermudian hospital, had a stock of US Special Delivery stamps to add to their correspondence to ensure it received Special Delivery service in the US once it arrived.

Another more established example of this kind of practice is the well known Colombian air mail service offered to people in a number of other countries. You could go to the Colombian Embassy or Consulate and buy Colombian air mail stamps for service on their national airline that was called SCADTA. These were overprinted with the letter or letters that abbreviated the name {in Spanish} of the country. By affixing one of these overprinted Colombian SCADTA stamps along with your regular stamps of your own country, the letter would go by normal mail until it reached Colombia where it would then be given air mail service internally. Here is an example of a letter that went by boat from the United States {Estados Unidos or EU} to Colombia and then once in Colombia it went by airmail on SCADTA airplanes. You can see that both the US stamps and the overprinted Colombian stamp are cancelled with the US postmark. The Colombian postmarks were added once it reached Colombia.

For those who are interested, The USPOD had an official policy of accepting foreign originating special delivery mail if property franked.

Section 852.2 of the 1913 Postal Laws and Regulations states
"United States Special Delivery stamps attached to articles mailed abroad and containing mails from the United States shall be cancelled in the sea Post Office or the United States Exchange Post Office which opens the mails and distributes the articles therein contained. In case such stamps are cancelled in a foreign mailing office, the articles shall nevertheless be delivered by Special Delivery messenger."
g special delivery stamps placed on incoming mail.

I'll post some samples from my collection as well. One of them is a SCADA service with U.S. special delivery as well.

Very nice items, Used US. A nice area in which to specialize.