Unusual Newfie Cover -- Why?

Been a while since I've share some new additions to my collection but someone inquired, so here is one for the SCF.

Please comment, enjoy, share what you have and remember--any Newfoundland covers?

This is Unitrade #26 or NSSC/Walsh #36. Black Seal 5 cent. Not a lot of these on covers, but plenty of the stamp in your books. Sort of a bummer when you think about those collectors who floated and removed them in the early 1900s. Used this stamp goes for $90-$130, maybe. On cover five times or more.

The unusual part is that the cancels clearly show that this envelope went from out port (Brigus) to Outport (Harbor Grace) without the metropolis of St Johns canceling it.

Tommy...I ran into this with a cover about a year ago and found out that some offices sent there covers/letters to more main post offices or alternative offices for cancelling..I believe it was a New Brunswick cover...Could be wrong though...Nice covers.

Robert

I suppose one has to be from up there to understand the problem?

Peter

PS I love that cover!

As with many old Newfoundlanders, you can find a lot of information online about Claudius Watts (1811-1908). Tom, it might make for some interesting colour for your album or an exhibit some day. With only a quick look, I found his will and a lengthy letter he wrote.

Nice cover - I have always liked this stamp and its sister, the brown seal.

I do not collect Newfoundland, but this cover caught my attention as a general postal history question and a matter of knowing how mail was transported between offices - and St John's in particular. I have no idea in the case of this cover, but two general scenarios come to mind. Let's open the can of worms and see how it plays out.

Scenario 1: The major city (St John's, in this case) acts as a sorting and transportation hub with spokes going out to each nearby smaller post office with a round-trip each day. (I doubt this scenario, btw.)




Scenario 2: The major city has only a few routes, each serving several smaller offices in each direction. I could see mail sorted in St John's each night, the boats leave each morning. One boat leaves toward the SW going to Brigus and then northward passing through several ports including Harbour Grace, etc., before returning (perhaps by the reverse route) in the evening to St John's. This letter was posted early in the morning at Brigus and caught the mailboat north and was left at Harbour Grace a few hours later, merely delivered "down the route" never having to go through St John's at all.




The point being that these two post offices are as close to each other as to St John's, so I believe there is very likely a routing which carried this cover between these two offices and it never went to St John's where it might have received a postmark at an interim location. AND the locals would have known their mail schedules. It would be interesting to plot the geography of covers which DID get a transiting postmark in St John's. Does anyone have any documentation on mail contracts which would detail the transport routes and schedules even better?

(The map is scanned from a c1875 atlas.)

John,

Nice amplification. There are several studies in the past on this, and several being done now by BNAPs members. My understanding from the books and fellow BNAPS members is that both #1 and #2 above occurred, but there were also other scenarios of direct to direct mail delivery as well. So like my cover Brigus to Harbour Grace, like a one way delivery. Keep in mind that there were many boats used at this time for this, so mail went many different paths. There is of course no way for me to prove that my cover went on a one way from Brigus to Harbour and that it might have been a boat from St Johns that passed through (your "scenario 2" above). But the norm back then was that St Johns so dominated postal routes, so what we can know for certain is that my cover did not go to Harbour Grace via St Johns because the postal authorities always canceled covers in route and because it lacks the St Johns cancel at all, we know this. Lastly, since the date in both Brigus and HG is May 13--it furthers evidences a direct outport-to-outport route. This particularity is what caught my eye, why I paid extra for it, and why I believe it to be unique--possibly the only one of this stamp. (Though time for all of you to dig out those old covers with this stamp and see!)