Posting Letters at the Pole

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 520, 24 November 1928, Page 26

Posting Letters at the Pole

SHE information that an American philatelist is going to pay Sir Hubert Wilkins many thousands of dollars for a mail of 150 letters, which he will carry across the Pole reminds me that a number of expeditious into the Great White Wastes are represented in the albums of stamp collectors. Wilkins’s rival, Commander Richard Byrd, when he went to the North Pole, carried a bag containing fifteen small envelopes, 2in by lin. These souvenirs were autographed by Byrd, and their limited size was due to the desire to economise weight and space. The airman did not attempt to make very much money out of the und mg and sold the little pieces of paper for the meagre sum of ten dollars apiece. However, if he has not already made arrangements for the disposal of his mail, Wilkins has shown him how to do big business. In 1925 Norway issued a set of 3even values for tbe flight of Amundsen. These show a Polar bear stand ing on an iceberg gazing at the passing plane. He must have been so badly frostbitten while doing this as to require surgical attention, for some of the stamps picture him as being without his left hind foot. Both Scott and Shackleton used New Zealand stamps, suitably overprinted, for their Antarctic trips. When Sir Ernest Shackleton left New Zealand with the Nimrod in 1908, he had been sworn in as a postmaster and carried sheets of the old New Zealand “Penny Universal” issue overprinted in green thus: King Edward VII. Land. This overprint read from the bottom of tbe stamp. Two years later, Captain R. F.

(WRITTEN for THE SUN, by H. L. CHISHOLM)

Scott left New Zealand with a supply of the halfpenny King Edward stamps and of the Penny Universal which was in issue with it. These had a black horizontal overprint: VICTORIA LAND. But, of the twin issue, the halfpenny value is by far the scarcer. Of quite a different type, though perhaps nearly as interesting, are three labels which Mr. F. J. Melville listed some years ago. These were printed by the halftone process and he attributes them to some humorist who thought that they might mark the exploits of the notorious Dr. Cook. Across the top of the* central pictures are the . words “NORTH POLE POST.” while the values are expressed at the foot. The “one tusk” value is in green, and shows a walrus among icebergs in the centre. Right across the top of the stamp is “Peary Land.” A dog sleigh figures ou’ the red “two bones” value, which is marked

An interesting stamp designed for correspondence carried from Germany to America on the Graf Zeppelin. “Cook Land,” and on the blue stamp which was to cost “five skins” were the two explorers, Peary and Cook, engaged in the task of nailing the starspangled banner to the North “Pole.” This is headed “Nobody’s Land.”