Page 12 - South Georgia

Postal History of South Georgia, 1909 ~ 13

‘PAID at SOUTH GEORGIA’ PROVISIONALS
Between October 1911 and February 1912, Grytviken Post Office suffered with shortages of low value
stamps, resolved by Acting Postmaster Binnie who built a small handstamp to show pre-payment of postage,

with the rate and authorising Postmasters’ initials added by hand

E
1911 Cover [Osborne F2] with two strikes of datestamp SG1, 31 NO 11 and 1 NO 11,
‘31 NO 11’ seen as erroneous, so second correcting strike applied; believed to be the last day of use of

Handstamp SH 1A in its first state with lower case ‘a’ in ‘at’
This cover left South Georgia taken by Pesca’s transport ship SS Cachalote when she set off for

Buenos Aires on 12 November 1911 with a cargo of whale oil, sperm oil, guano and mail
At Framnæs shipyard, Sandefjord many generations of whale catchers were built and maintained

BISECTED King Edward VII 2½d
In an endeavour to stretch his rapidly diminishing stamp stock to meet the unforeseen demand for 1d stamps

for the GSPE final mail, including numerous expedition postcards, Acting Postmaster Binnie wrote to say
he had been ‘reduced to bisecting’…

This is the only known surviving example; on piece cut from a GSPE postcard
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