NZ Great Barrier Island Pigeon Post

S.S. Wairarapa


The lack of communications was emphasised in very unfortunate circumstances.  The SS Wairarapa was a vessel of the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand. Launched in 1882, it was a prominent ship, known for its regular passenger and cargo service between Sydney, Australia, and New Zealand. The ship played a crucial role in connecting the two countries and transporting passengers, cargo, and mail.


On the night of October 28, 1894, the SS Wairarapa was enroute from Sydney to Auckland. The ship carried approximately 230 passengers and crew members, along with a significant cargo. As the ship neared the northern coast of Great Barrier Island, it encountered rough seas, strong currents, and limited visibility due to heavy rain and fog.


Despite the challenging conditions, Captain John Francis Morley decided to maintain full speed, hoping to reach Auckland on schedule.  It was also noted later that just the previous week the ship had set a new 'record' for the journey (interesting theme with the Titanic?). Tragically, the ship's course was misjudged, and it struck the jagged rocks of Miners Head on the northern tip of Great Barrier Island at around 2:30 a.m. on October 29, 1894.


The impact was catastrophic, tearing a massive hole in the hull of the SS Wairarapa. Passengers and crew were thrown into chaos as the ship began to take on water rapidly. In the midst of the confusion, lifeboats were launched, but the rough seas and treacherous conditions made it extremely challenging to evacuate the ship safely.


The residents of Great Barrier Island quickly mobilized to aid the survivors. Local Māori, including the Ngāti Rehua tribe, played a pivotal role in rescue efforts, displaying remarkable courage and compassion. Despite their heroic efforts, the disaster resulted in significant loss of life. Of the approximately 230 people on board, it is estimated that over 130 perished in the wreck, including women, children, and crew members.


And nobody outside of Great Barrier knew.  There was no communication means.  Fortunately there was another small steamer in the area, the S.S. Argyle.  She was able to collect the survivors and reached Auckland at 3 a.m. on 1 November - three days after the event - and no-one had a clue.

The wreck of the SS Wairarapa remains a haunting reminder of the perils of maritime travel in the late 19th century. It prompted inquiries and investigations into ship safety and navigation practices. Additionally, the tragedy served as a catalyst for improvements in coastal navigation and led to the establishment of lighthouses and navigational aids in the region.


But the accident had two philatelic legacies.  The first was the mail on the S.S. Wairarapa.  The S.S. Argyle returned the next week with divers and although difficult, they recovered over 100 bags of mail.  Each letter saved from the wreck was stamped "Saved from the Wreck of the Wairarapa in either blue or a violet blue colour.  These covers are now very collectible.









The second Philatelic legacy of even greater significance was the birth of the Great Barrier Pigeon Service.

neilmac,

I haven't enjoyed my morning coffee so much in a long while. Another TSF thread to be proud of.

Londonbus1

Hi Neil

Just a Bing search on the internet using the keywords "S.S Wairarapa wreck" - gives us this: S.S Wairarapa wreck

Then just select "images" from the result. Plenty there to select from :-)

Now, back to your story re the origins of the Great Barrier Pigeongram Service by the 2 rival companies .....

I do not have any items related to this, my money has gone mainly into Chalons + I don't know enough about them to be able to confidently purchase genuine examples - which can be a little pricey.
But I would love to get a few examples to be able to have a small piece of this history.

Looking forward to your showing of your collection.



Dave

The Next Chapter - Samuel Holden Howie

As a consequence of the mix up and losing his agent Miss Springall, Fricker moved his agency from Okupu to Oroville in April 1897, 3 miles away over an arduous track.  He established an agency with a Mr. McMillan, a Canadian who was a storekeeper in the town.  The town was the current head of mining operations and as such Fricker was able to get support from three mining companies to get his business established.  Fricker also asked the Government for support, but the Premier and the Post Office weren't happy to support what they saw as a competitive situation.  Parkin and the Service also requested support but the government weren't interested.

In April 1898 Parkin decided to pull the pin.  He had picked up some additional responsibilities and decided his time was best spent doing other things.  It may be that the service wasn't paying a dividend.  Miss Springall contacted a Samuel Holden Howie, at the time an 18 year old law clerk whose hobby was racing pigeons.  Long story short - he jumped at the chance.  He quickly upped the ante.




In October 1898 a Mr Henry Bolitho, a keen philatelist, approach Howie about producing a stamp.  Howie was supportive.  In his seminal work, 'The Great Barrier Island 1898-1899 Pigeon Post Stamps' Reg Walker recounts the agreed business proposal:

• A 1/- stamp would be more popular than a 1/6 stamp
• So reduce the cost of the stamp to match the face value of the stamp
• Mr Bolitho subsidise Mr Howie 3d for every bird arriving with a message bearing a stamp.
• Mr Bolitho was responsible for producing the stamps.

The First Airmail Stamp of the World

Mr Bolitho worked with the Observer Printing Works in Auckland to develop and produce the first stamps.  The first stamps were available in October and the first known use was November 1898. (earlier beliefs of an October stamped flimsy have not been confirmed).    Of interest, the bird at the centre of this design is a swallow, not a pigeon!  The stamps were printed in sheets of 18 in a three by six format.  A single die was created from three impressions, and so the sheet had to be run through the machine six times, thus leading to different alignment of the stamps on different sheets.  


 
The two sheet images above from the Te Papa Museum collection.



The only order submitted was for 100 sheets, so 1800 stamps were produced but it is estimated that only 300 stamps were used and the other 1500 sold to collectors and dealers.

As an interesting aside, when the stamps first appeared on the market in the UK their genuineness was in doubt and so the editor of the London Philatelist wrote to the NZ Postal Department who replied that the stamps had never been used for any postal purpose!     Got o love the bureaucrats!  However further research uncovered the story and interest in the stamps grew.

VP 1 Types

As mentioned the die was used to create three impressions for moulds, and each of these were filed with a stereotype metal.  The three were combined to create a printing plate.  If the forgeries are somewhat confusing, you can compare your stamp to the three stereos and it should match one of them almost perfectly.  If it doesn't then it is a forgery.  There were no other printings.


Stereo 1 - Key feature is dent near bottom of right frameline



Stereo 2 - Key feature is it doesn't have the flaws seen in the other two.  Note this example with the BLUE postmark.  Any VP1 stamp off piece with a violet stamp is very likely a forgery.  There is one on piece that is not but the rest are very suspect.  



Stereo 3 - Has four breaks in the bottom frameline, especially the one on the farthest right about a sixth of the way a long.

The return of Parkin and VP2

Samuel Holden Howie was a young fella still, and not as resourced as others.  He started having trouble with his birds, and he started losing a few too.  Hard work this flimsy carrying.  He sought assistance from Parkin who had a solid loft of birds.  The first batch of stamps were also running low (1500 of the 1800 had been given to collectors and dealers after all).  Parkin was temporarily back and a new design was prepared.

An engraver by the name of R. Richardson did the work (not to be confused with the printer J. Richardson of Chalon fame!).  A lot more elaborate than VP1, although for some reason the Swallow survived on the design.  This sheet was printed with six types/stereos and 200 sheets of 24 (6 by 4) were produced giving a total of 4800.  Wilson & Horton the printers of the NZ Herald did the job.  The paper was gray and a thick soft version and a harder thinner version are known.  Neither had a watermark.

As all the sheets appeared with no bottom margin there were theories about possible larger sheet sizes, but interestingly it seems its always the bottom margin that is missing - never the top - so bigger sheets seem unlikely but you never know!




One of the things I like to do is to reconstruct the sheets from single copies.  Reg Walker's book has some great descriptions on how to identify each stamp, with his own approach and the approach of a Mr. Sefi who studied the Pigeon Post stamps in detail from a very early stage.  To identify the six types is relatively easy as we have images of the complete sheets with the six types running from left to right across the sheet.  Below the six types and Reg Walker's identification process using the bottom centre ornament description.  To be fair they can be quite hard to ascertain and in some cases I struggle to tell.  A good quality image of the whole sheet is useful so you can compare against the real deal.  Nonetheless here they are.


Type 1 - Ornament has very small tail and bottom looks like a mountain valley





Type 2 - Tail touches the line below it and slants to left; the bottom line looks like two small autos travelling away from each other on a highway! 





Type 3 - Bulge at bottom; tail slants slightly to left and touches bottom, which appears like a canyon.





Type 4 - Very short blunt heavy tail; white spot in centre very small.





Type 5 - Tail is very curved slanting to left; end of ornament above it is well rounded.





Type 6 - Very short tail, almost like a dot.  There are breaks to the right and left.

Great work there Neil.

I am going to make a PDF out of this thread eventually.
Hopefully by the end of this lesson I will then be confident enough to buy some Pigeongram items produced by the 2 Great Barrier companies.

And not make any 'dud' purchases of forgeries unknowingly :-)



Dave

I shall do that Neil. Thanks 

I see that the book was published in 1968!

I have a copy of the book "A History of the Post Office in New Zealand" by Howard Robinson - and on pages 171-172 he mentions the Great Barrier Pigeon Service :








Dave

The Agency Stamps and the very confusing identification of Pigeongram stamps catalogue numbers! 

The relationship between the two Pigeon Post services was still very combative, or maybe competitive is a better word, and I don't use competitive as a constructive term. Fricker was still very active and decided to follow suit with an issue of stamps.  But he also decided to up the ante and compete on price.  He halved the price of the Great Barrier Island to Auckland to 6d and retained the 1/- cost for Auckland to Great Barrier.  For this he developed two stamps accordingly.  But these actions must have had a bearing on the profitability of both businesses.  One might get more business with the cheaper price, but would make less.  The other would have less business but make a little more per transaction.  Either way you look at it, not very smart business - but that's what a competitive mindset does - clouds rational thinking.  Back to the stamps.

Although the Agency stamps were issued as the 4th and 5th stamps respectively they are known as VP7 and VP8.  It must have been convenient for stamp collectors to think of the Original Services stamps as one cluster (VP1-6) and the Agencies as another (VP7-8).  It must also have compounded the view that the Original Service was in fact, the original.  But was it.  You could argue that it was as Fricker who had set it up and flown the first flimsies.  But when he left the business to establish another, was it the business he left that kept the honour of first or Fricker himself?  That he had moved on and the business passed to Parkin and then Howie gave the impression the Agency was second to establish.  You could go either way.

Nonetheless Howie with Bolitho's assistance had issued the first stamps so they come first in the catalogue.  Fricker's stamps though are known as VP7 and VP8 but were actually the 4th and 5th stamps produced and were on sale on 7 July 1899, just four days after the Services overprint (VP3) was issued on 7 July.  It gets even more confusing with the catalogue numbers, because the subsequent Marotiri overprint (VP5) was used from the Copper mines the day before the 'Pigeon Gram' stamp (VP4) of the Original Service was issued.  The Marotiri red (VP6) was the last to be issued.  

Whatever.  

Fricker engaged a well known artist, a Mr. Wrigg of Maori War fame.  He had won the New Zealand Cross, our then equivalent of the Victoria Cross (although that is a story in itself - controversy surrounds his award but that's not for us to deal with).  He was no doubt a talented artist.  He designed the stamps with a pigeon (finally!) flying over buildings). The design had been used before on certificates issued by the Auckland Flying Club of which Parkin had been secretary!     Got to love Fricker's sense of humour.  Given Richard Pearse* had yet to fly the first powered plane down Canterbury way we can conclude that this club was a pigeon flying club! It was rumoured that Richard Seddon (known as King Dick - a beloved Premier of NZ) had suggested the triangular shape, which were then lithographed by the Brett Publishing Company who published the Auckland Star.  They were supposed to be printed at 3/4 their design size as it was thought they were too big - but the instruction was not followed and so we got these beauties below.

 








These bottom two images show full sheets as printed.  20 stamps in the 6d sheet (10,000 stamps in 500 sheets) and 10 stamps in the 1/- sheet (5,000 stamps in 250 sheets).  


Now that both Pigeongram services had stamps, historic flimsies were abounding!  Yay.



* Richard William Pearse (3 December 1877 – 29 July 1953) was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering aviation experiments. Witnesses interviewed many years afterward describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew.  Thought I'd throw that in here for our American mates