Parcel ship
The Paketschiff (English: packet ship or packet boat, short: packet; French: paquebot) is a type of ship used from the 16th century to the 19th century .
history
Parcel ships emerged from the mail sailors, known in English as post-barks in the 16th and 17th centuries, which carried mail, goods and passengers between two ports. In the 16th century, state mail (see the beginnings of the Royal Mail ), such as official documents, dispatches , etc. was called "The Packet". In a report by the Royal British Treasury from 1598 it says: " Postes toward Ireland, Hollyheade, allowance as well for serving the packket by lande as for entertaining a bark to carie over and return the packet x pounds the moneth"(By analogy: funds will be made available to transport monthly shipments overland to Holyhead and by mail boat to Ireland and back).
The General Post Office built a than at this time Post Office Packet Service on named service with explicitly mentioned as a "packet boats" little sailors. These ships were usually armed with around ten to twelve smaller cannons and were used to transport official mail, high-ranking passengers and special cargo even on distant lines. The distribution area was initially limited to Europe, but later all other areas of the British Empire were also served. Other states also set up comparable services. Many of these ships had collective names made up of the destination and the word "packet" (Baltimore packets, Sydney packets, etc.). By the 18th century, the design of parcel ships had changed compared to conventional freight sailors due to finer lines and, as a result, higher speeds.
The parcel ships lost their prominent position with the introduction of the steamship. More and more states have shifted the transport of important mail to subsidized mail ships operated by private steamship companies. Their outstanding importance was reflected in many countries through components of the shipping company name such as "steam packet line" or additions to names such as "RMS" for Royal Mail Ship ships used in this way. in Germany, for example, the term was found in the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hapag).
In the French-speaking world, the term "paquebot" has continued to be used with changing meanings and today stands for a passenger ship in regular service.
Paquebot stamp
In larger port cities, the postal administrations mostly used single-line letter stamps with the designation "Paquebot" without location information to stamp incoming mail. This can come franked from incoming ships without their own ship's mail, which is thus canceled. The stamp can also be used to confirm the acceptance of mail from crew members from ships lying in the port or in the roadstead with or without ship mail and the corresponding postage (transit stamp ).
Finally, the Paquebot stamp can also indicate that post has been posted on board ships without sea mail.
See also
literature
- Kemp, Peter K. (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea . 1st edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1976, ISBN 0-19-211553-7 .
References and comments
- ↑ Wolfram Grallert, Waldemar Gruschke: transpress Lexikon. Philately . 3rd edition, transpress publishing house for traffic, Berlin 1976, p. 326