ARTICLE:
Pacific Islands
FORUM:
introduction to the Pacific collection. Thanks to Chirstopher Clifford PISC
Vice-President for his article.
The
article was published, for the first time, on Stamp Lover magazine in August
2008.
The
Pacific
Islands
General
Introduction
For anyone
looking for a new area to collect, perhaps somewhere in the 25,000 islands of
the
Pacific Ocean
lies an inhabited island which offers a challenging,
rewarding and fascinating world of history, geography, and philatelic interest.
Your chosen island would lie
in the largest of the Earth's
oceans being 65.3 million square miles in area and the equator
subdivides it into the North Pacific
Ocean and
South Pacific Ocean
.
History
The
ocean was first sighted by Europeans early in the 16th century by the Spanish
explorer Vasco
Núñez de Balboa (1513), and then by
Ferdinand Magellan who crossed the Pacific in his circumnavigation of the world
(1519-1522). In the rest of the 16th Century Spanish ships sailed to
New Guinea
, the
Philippines
and the
Solomon Islands
. In the 17th Century it
was the Dutch led by Abel Tasman who discovered
Tasmania
and
New Zealand
, who dominated exploration in the area. The 18th Century saw the
French sending expeditions to Polynesia, and the British, through James Cook
leading three voyages through the South Pacific to
Australia
and
Hawaii
. The 19th Century saw the continuing rivalry between
Britain
and
France
as both countries laid claim to islands in
Oceania
and both through the use of missionaries believed they had God on their side.
Map
of the
Pacific Ocean
Throughout
the Pacific it was missionaries who were responsible for much of the early
postal history. On
Tonga
, Wesleyan missionaries arrived in 1822 and on
Samoa
missionaries sent
by the London Missionary Society arrived in 1830. However, it was the Anglican
Church in
New Zealand
who believed that they should be responsible for the evangelisation in the
Pacific. George Augustus Selwyn (Bishop of New Zealand) drew up plans for a
mission to the
Melanesian
Islands
; the headquarters of this mission being on
Norfolk Island
. Despite missionaries from Norfolk
Island travelling throughout Melanesia communication
across the Pacific during the 19th Century was haphazard; islands
such as New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Fiji, Gilbert and Ellice
Islands and the Solomons, were dependent on the vagaries of passing trading
ships which would carry mail to Sydney or Auckland where it was put into the
post. Many of these early letters carried no indication of where they had
originated from. Towards the end of the century islands
such as Fiji (1870), Tonga (1886), Samoa (1877), Cook Islands (1892) and the
Solomon Islands (1907) introduced their own stamps, and this coincided with
shipping companies such as the Burns Philp Ltd,
Sydney introducing
regular timetabled trips
across the Pacific. The ships of
Burns Philp can be collected on postcard and the
reverse of many pacific island envelopes have the inscribed Burns Philp
logo.
1882
Norfolk Island
‘Per First Mail’
Many
of the Pacific islands have followed a sensible stamp issuing policy with their
stamps reflecting aspects of their flora, history, buildings, and birdlife. For
some small Pacific islands such as Pitcairn (1940),
Norfolk
(1947) and Tokelau (1948) it was not until midway through the 20th
Century that they issued their own stamps; collecting all the stamps of these
territories is an achievable target.
Possibly the
most romantic, yet isolated island within the Pacific is
Pitcairn Island
. This
island was uninhabited until 1790, when it was occupied by mutineers of the HMS
Bounty accompanied by a group of Tahitian men and women. The community was not
discovered until 1808, when American whalers visited the island. In 1856,
because of overpopulation, the islanders were transferred to
Norfolk Island
although a number of them returned afterwards. In 1914, the opening of
the Panama Canal placed Pitcairn on the direct run to
New Zealand
. Liners carrying hundreds of passengers stopped at the island to purchase
mementoes and postcards. Mail from this period was franked with a series of
different types of ‘No stamps available,
Pitcairn Island
’. Today the links between the Pitcairn and
Norfolk Island
remain immensely strong.
Another
isolated island gave rise to a completely new type of mail delivery; so isolated
was the island of Niuafo'ou
in the Tonga Islands, which lies half way between Fiji and Samoa that
in 1882 a trader named
Travers arranged with Tongan Postal officials for ‘ tins’ to
be used as mail bags. They were taken out to passing liners by strong native
swimmers, who then returned with similar cans which were filled with incoming
mail. The most famous phase of Tin Can Mail was introduced when Walter George Quensell
arrived on the island in 1928. He realised that philatelic interest could be
generated by adding a rubber stamp which read "TIN CAN MAIL" to each
outgoing letter. Such was the philatelic interest in ‘Tin Can Mail’ that
Quensell could later claim to have serviced half million letters to 148
different countries.
The
reaction of Pacific territories to World War Two offers collectors several
fascinating areas to research. Most islands introduced civil censorship of mail
with different types of re-sealing labels and instructional hand stamps. Also,
between 1941-1945 New Zealand forces were based in
Fiji
,
New Caledonia
,
Solomon Islands
, New Hebrides and
Norfolk Island
. Covers sent by
New Zealand
military personnel were marked with the
New Zealand
triangular service censor rubber stamp (numbered 1-137) and the various New
Zealand Army Post Offices hand-stamps. Since
military units moved around the Pacific discovering the exact whereabouts of
where these covers were posted from is very challenging.
Triangular
Censor Number 15 – Used in
Fiji
,
New Caledonia
and possibly Solomons
World War 11
also proved to be a turning point in the development of Air Mail routes across
the Pacific. In 1943 the New Zealand Post Office developed what was known as the
‘Islands Mail Service’ with weekly flights between
New Zealand
,
Norfolk Island
,
New Caledonia
,
New Hebrides
,
Fiji
, and
Tonga
. The military supply routes developed by the American, Australian and
New Zealand
military air forces were converted into civilian ones. The
1951 flying boat service from
Auckland
via
Fiji
and the Cook Islands to Tahiti was known as the "
Coral Route
";
Samoa
became part of this route in 1952.
Helping
collectors to decide what to collect, publishing research, and running an
auction of Pacific material is the
Pacific Islands Study Circle
. Founded in 1962 this society encourages the study of philately and postal
history of the
Pacific
Islands
(excluding
Australia
,
New Zealand
,
Papua New Guinea
and the
Philippines
) but including both Christmas and
Cocos Islands
. Within the society ‘Group
Leaders’ for specific islands are available to receive enquires about their
territories. Four times a year the
society publishes a colour magazine containing the latest research and
discoveries. Recent articles have been on Fiji Definitive Overprints, New
Caledonia Postcards, Manuscript Cancellations of the Gilbert and
Ellice Islands
. Articles on the Provisional Overprints of Tonga Birds (2002/2004) have
resulted in a definitive publication of member’s research.
This
article can only offer a very brief insight into the wonders of Pacific island
philately. However, the area offers the chance to make new discoveries, collect
thematically, and assemble an
Islands
stamps in their entirety.
____________°°°°°°°°________________
Published
with the authorization of the Author Christopher Clifford.
This
article was published in Stamp Lover magazine August 2008.
Thanks to:
Stamp Lover the magazine of the National Philatelic Society,
London
,
England
, www.ukphilately.org.uk/nps)
come
back to the English Summary page .
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