November 2004 Cover |
by Steve Shay |
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USS MARYLAND |
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This cover holds the distinction of having the earliest known pictorial cachet on a naval cover. In late 1928, President-elect Herbert Hoover made a Good Will tour of South and Central America aboard the battleship USS Maryland, BB-46. The trip was made along the Pacific coast. Stamp Dealer A.C. Roessler, better know for his sponsorship of First Day Covers and air related covers, must have provided a quantity of pre-stamped and pre-cacheted envelopes to the Navy Mail Clerk aboard the Maryland. The covers are all hand addressed to Roessler and have Maryland Type 5 cancels, showing at least 3 different ports of mailing, Corinto, Nicaragua, Callao, Peru and La Union, San Salvador. There may be other locations. There would be a few more naval cachets during the period 1928-1930 but it was not until 1931-1932 that cachets really began to catch on. Roessler prepared cachets for the USF Constitution in 1932. He also prepared covers for the Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Expedition in the submarine Nautilus. (The Expedition though well intentioned met with many hardships and failed in the mission to cross the Arctic under the polar ice cap.) Roessler also fabricated covers for this Expedition using bogus cachets and cancels, an act he was later indicted on. Unfortunately, these fabricated covers are fairly common and are sold as original covers. The USS Maryland was commissioned in 1921 and was present at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Heavily damaged during the battle, she was repaired and returned to the fleet 3 months later. The old battleship provided primarily bombardment support in the Pacific though she was present at the Battle of Suriago Strait when she fired her 16" guns in anger at the Japanese battle fleet. She was hit 3 times during the later part of the war by suicide planes. After the war, Maryland made five voyages between the west coast and Pearl Harbor as part of Operation Magic Carpet returning combat veterans home. Maryland was decommissioned in 1947 and scrapped in 1959. Her bell remains on display at the Maryland State House in Annapolis. |
