Under Queen Victoria, The British Empire was at it’s zenith, (unless you would like to argue that Britain’s new Prime Minister means the Empire just conquered the home country.) To police the empire and the sea routes, the Royal Navy built iron and copper clad light cruisers/corvettes that had steam engines and sails to cope with long periods at sea. What a great opportunity for two young Princes to learn about the Empire as midshipmen. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This is a nice looking stamp, if you forgive the condition issues of my copy. As with so many commonwealth issues there is just too many of them. This issue had 17 issues of people and their boats including caribe Indians and their war canoes, to the local then current tugboat. Seems a little disrespectful to put such riffraff beside King George V.
Todays stamp is issue A51, a 35 cent stamp issued by Antiqua on August 19th, 1970. In addition to the 17 issues, there are also reissues to account for a currency devaluation and then overprints for you guessed it another currency devaluation. According to the Scott catalog, this stamp is worth 80 cents used.
When future King George V was born, he was not expected to be ever King, since he had an older brother named Albert. Since the two boys were only 17 months apart they were still educated together. As part of that education, at age 14, the two young princes set out as midshipmem on the ironclad Cruiser HMS Bacchante that took them around the world. Accompanying them was a tudor that had them fill out a daily diary. The crew had been chosen specitically to be good inflences on the boys but in reality the crew was told to keep their distance fron the princes. Surprisingly after the three year cruise, the tutor released the young royal dairies in book form for sale. He had already annoyed Queen Victoria by the young princes having not learned any foriegn languages. Perhaps not that surprisingly, young Prince George did come back with a blue and red tattoo of a dragon on his arm, done by a local tattoo artist in Japan.
Albert, then on track to be the future King left the Navy. Not so for Prince George, he was assigned to the West Indian naval station in Bermuda and served with increasing responsibility on HMS Thrush, on HMS Canada, as seen on this stamp, and finally as Captain of the ironclad cruiser HMS Melampus.
The death of his older brother Albert in 1892 saw the end of George’s naval career and his life took a big turn to prepare him for what was a long reign. Part of that turn was marrying Princess Mary of Teck. She had been previously engaged to Prince Albert.
The kind of long haul ships that George served on fell out of favor in the 1890s as there was a naval building binge of bigger, more heavily armed and armoured ships by all the want to rule the sea powers. HMS Canada for example was scrapped in 1897 despite being less than 20 years old. There was still an empire to police, and I think an air of the old light cruisers can be seen in even post war designs like the Leander class ships from the 1960s and the Amazon class from the 1970s. Ships not designed for the battle of Jutland, but rather to show the flag far away on a good day and aim the cannon and land some marines on a bad day.
Well my drink is empty. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. Also Happy Halloween for everyone and Happy Reformation Day for fellow Lutherans.