Given stamp lead times, the stamp designers could not have imagined how much Britain would be thinking about their fleet that spring. It proved a great time to remind of the tradition that was being built on. 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.
The lead times meant that this set of stamps lacked the current Sea Lord and his innovative through deck cruiser the HMS Invincible that was proving itself in the South Atlantic. Well not really, it broke down making the older bigger HMS Hermes more key. Kind of like HMS Dreadnaught in WW1 actually. That is the real failing of this issue, it is a little too much in the past.
Todays stamp is issue A314, a 26 Penny stamp issued by Great Britain on June 16th, 1982. It was a 5 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents used.
Lord Jacky Fisher became First Sea Lord in 1906. His first act was to retire a number of older ships to free up resources for innovative new ships that naval rivals couldn’t match. An Italian naval architect had proposed to their navy a new class of battleship that would have all big guns so unprecedented firepower. When his own country didn’t bite he authored an article in Jane’s Fighting Ships that everyone read. Fisher went two better than the Italians. His HMS Dreadnaught would have all big guns but also have 10 knots more speed thanks to the new geared steam turbine propulsion invented by Parsons. British construction prowess would see that it was built in only 1 year. Current Flagships take 10 years or more to build. Thus it was Britain that was first with the most powerful ship. Both Japan and the USA had started construction of innovative battleships before HMS Dreadnaught but theirs only came on line years later, and in Japan’s case short of guns. The innovation of the ship meant that the new battleship from anywhere was known as a small d dreadnaught but earlier ships were now predreadnaughts. A dreadnaught is an old term for a heavy raincoat.
The ship became famous with a different crowd for attracting a notorious hoax. A group of Bloomsberry literary bohemians, some female, dressed up in blackface and Arab male gettup presenting themselves as a Royal Delegation from Abyssinia (modern Eritrea) in Africa. The lead Hoaxer was Irishman Horace de Vere Cole. He had previously presented himself in a similar getup to Cambridge where he was a student as the uncle of the Sultan of Zanzibar. The Captain of HMS Dreadnaught was fooled and gave them a personal tour of the ship.
When war came the dreadnaughts proved to be not so valuable. No fleet just sent them out to go head to head as they were just so expensive. HMS Dreadnaught did manage to sink a German U boat by ramming it using that extra speed. This was the only sinking of a submarine by a battleship. During the war the all big gun proved wrong and many small antiaircraft guns were added. The ship was quickly retired and scrapped after the war. By then Lord Fisher had moved on to incorporating turbine power to create super cruisers, the battlecruiser.
Well my drink is empty and i am wondering if it would be wrong to toast both the sailor and the hoaxer. Perhaps if I pour two more, a capital (ship) idea. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.