Per S/S 'Pres. Roosevelt'' ?

Hi Folks, as the subject title suggests, I am looking for some info. on what Per s/s means and if a cover like this is unusual. Thank you in advance.

Should have googled this first.. seems to be a ship.

(Sailing)? Ship Roosevelt even has an RMS duplex (Royal Mail Ship)probably from it's journey to Germany.

Here is two ships that fit but the last one is most probably your ship.

S.S. Roosevelt
(one of Byrd's Arctic ships)



S.S. Roosevelt
Also a WWII troop carrier

Thanks.. I think it may be steam ship though.?

Yes...it is SteamShip and your letter was has a double strike Boston and Albany RMS duplex postmark (RMS usually indicate railway or streetcar) and has the correct postage of 5 cents. The sender asked for the letter to be sent by the SS pres Roosevelt as that may have been the quickest route to Berlin. The Pres Roosevelt docked at Hamburg I believe.

Yes, it was intended to be sent to Germany on the Steam Ship (S/S) Roosevelt. Adding route markings used to be very common - it was a way for the sender to try to get their letter mailed on a certain route or to get put on a certain ship or airplane that they knew would be departing to the destination soon. Sometimes it worked and sometimes the post office simply put the letter on whatever ship or aircraft they chose or to go by whatever route they thought would be the fastest. The public sometimes did not know when one route or another would be the fastest.

This kind of marking is interesting but does not really add any appreciable commercial value to a cover since it was so common.

It's not something that you see too commonly on 20th century covers, but well into the banknote era this is quite commonly seen on transatlantic mail.

Here's a few that I had handy with ship markings on them..

"Via U.S. Mail Per Ocean Queen" to Lima, Peru.



"per Steamer City of London January 13 1866" to Dublin, Ireland



"Per Steamer Columbia" to Manzanillo, Cuba.



Edit: My dumb self got confused on a ship name... NY, London.. same thing, right?

billw2 those are mighty pretty covers

Thanks! :)

billw2... the cover to Dublin was posted to Frederic W Pim and,as you have already corrected, was via the City of London.

Scott,

Thanks. I haven't even tried to begin researching that cover yet as it's a rather recent purchase. Looks like he was around from 1839-1926.

Steam Ship! I can't believe I missed that! Oh well.. @billw2 What beautiful covers! Thanks for sharing them friend! I'd rather see your stuff here anyway.

And my poor contribution to this topic :)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary

Thank you all for the usefull info. and yes billw2, you have some might interesting covers there.