1919 USs. Vermont Battleship Postcard Postmark

In early 1919, after bringing troops home from WWI, the Vermont was prepared for deactivation and sent to the Pacific via the Panama Canal. She stopped in several cities, including Astoria, Oregon before her final destination.

Between the cancel bars, this stamp says "Astoria" and "Ore". I haven't seen many ship postmarks. This one has a "wavy" circle, curved killer bars that almost look drawn on, and the "Astoria" letters don't seem to line up.

Nice cancel. It is possible that this was most likely a 'rubber' hand-stamp, hence the wavy lines (?)

Chimo

Bujutsu

These are not very expensive so I would not think that it is a forgery. Ship's mail clerks had little cancellation kits that included soft rubber circles and cancellation bars and little rubber numbers and letters to set into them so they could make various cancels. My guess is this is simply a case of the clerk really pushing down hard on the cancelling stamp which caused the rubber to deform and make a very dark cancelation.

Thank you both, a soft rubber stamp kit never occurred to me! I tend to think of the hand cancel stamps as thick and hard. The deformed circle stamp really threw me off.

A quazi Doane cancel maybe? Neat though! Man-O-Live that clerk must of really slammed that puppy down huh? Ha-Ha!

Yeah, if thats his usual style that hand stamp was probably warped before he smashed it on this postcard.

What you have is a Locy Type 3(AC)Cancel. (well used) http://www.uscs.org/cover-collectin...locy-system/ Hope this helps. Don Lawson USCS LOG Auction Manager.

Great information! This website is exactly what I was looking for. Not sure how I missed it in my Google searches, but I'm bookmarking it right now.

ray,
There is a whole book that covers the differant the US Naval postmarks. look under the store tab for Catalog of United States Naval Postmarks.