For many years philatelists have been puzzled by these overprints, who produced them, and the circumstances which led to their production.
Fig 1. First category of covers – Those without cancellations. Note stamps applied after cancellations.
The solution was thought to be provided in articles published in the philatelic press in the 1980s. This suggested that the stamps were overprinted by an Australian army officer by the name of Merrillus, who posted letters franked by these stamps from the troop ship OMRAH during World War I. The letters were written on Orient Line stationery and the addressee was assumed to be the writer’s wife. Unfortunately no records of an AIF officer by the name Merrillus could be found, and the articles were speculative.
The breakthrough came when I was corresponding with a Mr. R.S. Merrillees and mentioned my interest in Australian military postal history. He indicated that it was his grandfather who had produced the AIF over-prints. A careful reexamination of the name on the envelopes revealed that they were addressed to Mrs. Merrillees not Merrillus – the loops of the ‘EE’ were so fine that we had read the ‘EE’ as ‘U’!
Of course not all the correspondence from soldiers is addressed to relatives of the same surname. Most of the letters were addressed to Salisbury Street, Surrey Hills, Victoria. Could these letters have been sent to his wife? A search of service records at the National Archives of Australia produced the details of Captain (later Major) Crichton Raoul Merrillees, whose postal address at the time of enlistment was Salisbury Street, Surrey Hills. Now that we had the details of this officer it was possible to check the accuracy of other information.
The records indicated that Merrillees traveled to England on the Orient Line ship ORONTES (Not the OMRAH, as had been suggested earlier) and the dates on letters from various ports en route coincided with the dates the ORONTES called at these ports.
The ORONTES was one of the ships in convoy 28. It departed Sydney 9 December 1916, Melbourne 23 December 1916, Fremantle 29 December 1916 and arrived in Portsmouth England on 17 February 1917.
At the time the Suez Canal route was not being used because of the danger in the Mediterranean from enemy submarines. After May 1916 ships generally sailed to England by the Cape of Good Hope calling at Durban, Cape Town, and Freetown, Sierra Leone, for coal.
Covers are known cancelled at Pietermaritzburg near Durban on 12 January 1917 (Fig.2) and Freetown 30 January 1917 (Fig.3). These dates coincide with the arrival of the ORONTES at these ports.
The covers known can be divided into 3 categories.
1. Those without cancellations (Fig.1)
2. Those posted whilst on the troopships (Figs.2 and 3)
3. Those posted in Belgium in 1919 (Fig.4)
Fig 2. The second category of cover posted whilst on the troopships through civil post office at Pietermaritzburg near Durban in South Africa. Postage paid by 2½ d South African stamps.
Soldiers travelling on troopships generally posted mail on board. This mail was censored, then bagged and delivered to the main post office at that port for sending to Australia on the next ship. On reaching Australia the mail was cancelled. In Melbourne this mail was cancelled with marks reading AIF FREE to avoid it being taxed, because soldiers were entitled to free mail.Soldiers on leave at various ports also posted mail through civil post offices. The free mail privilege no longer applied and letters had to be franked with stamps of the country to pay postage.
Thus we find envelopes from Merrillees posted with foreign stamps paying the postage and the AIF overprints paying no postage – they are labels, as we call them today, Cinderella stamps.
Captain Merrillees had been appointed as a member of the AIF on 23 August 1915 and served in various military hospitals during the six months prior to embarkation. He sailed as medical officer in the 16 Field Ambulance.
The ORONTES commenced its voyage in Sydney and on arrival in Melbourne remained there for 10 days. This lengthy stay is important for it indicates that there was time for Merrillees to produce these stamps, or have them produced, before the ship departed. As medical officer it is likely that Merrillees went abroad before the troops embarked on inspections (a total of 533 boarded in Melbourne including troops, nurses and civilian munitions workers). It is likely that the overprints were made onboard, using the ships printing press used for printing memos, etc.
Previous writers have assumed that all covers were posted and that the covers without cancellations had not been cancelled, because postal officials recognized that the stamps were illegal. The volume of troopship mail through the Melbourne GPO was so large that machine cancels had been introduced specifically for use on troopship mail. This makes it unlikely that a few letters would have been removed from the bags of mail for special treatment. With the ship in port for so long, a more likely explanation must be that the letters were given to Mrs. Merrillees personally either by her husband or by someone else.
Fig 3. The second category of covers posted whilst on the troopships through the civil post office at Freetown, Sierra Leone. Outline of smaller stamp which presumably paid the postage is clearly seen.
The use of a troopship censor mark on the covers is another indication, in addition to the use of ship stationery, that covers originated from a ship. The standard troopship censor mark had a space in which the censor wrote the troopship’s transport number – usually an ‘A’ number e.g. A34. These covers, however, have a number 6081 added by the censor. Previously it had been suggested that this was the regimental number of the officer censoring the mail – in this case of Captain Merrillees. How-ever, officers did not have regimental numbers. The number is, in fact, unallocated in the sequence of the regiment’s troop numbers. But why did not Merrillees use the ship’s number? The answer is simple. The ORONTES was not a fitted troopship requisitioned by the Admiralty (those serving Australia were numbered A1 to A74), but a ship still managed by its owners on account of the government. Not being troopships they had no number. At this stage of the war shipping losses had been high, but the government saw the necessity of maintaining a civilian shipping service, even though it was much reduced, and used them to transport some troops.
The use of the unallocated numbers suggests that Merrillees wished to remain anonymous.
Two covers posted from the troopship are known to me. The first (Fig.2) has a two half pence South African stamps added to pay postage on a letter posted at a civil post office. The second (Fig.3) has a stamp missing, but the outline of the stamp can be clearly seen and it is smaller than the AIF overprinted KGV stamps. It is likely this was a Sierra Leone stamp paying postage on a letter posted from a civil post office in that country.
A cover has been reported cancelled on arrival in Australia 13 February 1917. This item would have been posted onboard the ship, bagged and returned to Melbourne where it was cancelled, the date suggests this could have been sent from Sierra Leone.
No covers have been seen by me posted between January 1917 (at Sierra Leone) and early 1919 when covers are known posted from Belgium. For an explanation we need to look at Merrillees’ war service.
On disembarking at Portsmouth in February 1917, he was employed at a convalescent depot and AIF headquarters in London. In September 1917 he proceeded to France with the 13 field ambulance. On 28 January 1918 he was promoted to Major. After leaving Britain, he returned to the front in France. He was clearly in the thick of the fighting, being wounded on two different occasions (7 May 1918 and 5 August 1918). He returned to active duties in September 1918 and remained until the end of the war as medical officer to the 13 battalion.
The armistice in November 1918 did not suddenly reduce his workload. Concerned that the enemy might not abide by the terms of surrender, the troops carried on as if a state of war still existed. In November and December 1918 the battalion was continuously on the move, spending very short time at each town it passed through. On 26 November 1918 they arrived at Florennes in Belgium, where they stayed for some weeks. Covers with AIF overprinted stamps are known posted from Florennes civil post office on 25 and 28 January 1919 (one cover is addressed to Merrillees himself and one to a fellow officer in another camp Fig.4).
Fig 4. The third category of cover posted from Belgium in 1919 on plain envelopes
Why the time delay between posting covers on the troopships and posting them from Florennes? Did Merrillees find another printing press and have more stamps overprinted.
Chris Ceramuga was kind enough to examine enlarged photocopies of the stamps and offer an opinion. His opinion is that: 1. Overprint on both the early and late covers, as well as the mint stamps, are all the same; 2. The overprint was made using probably a simple setting, one stamps at a time.
Ceramuga’s opinions supported my view that Merrillees sent these latter covers franked with stamps still in his possession when he was able to relax for the first time once the war was over.
It is possible that there may still be more to this story. Are there more covers yet to be recorded? Was Merrillees a member of any of the Victorian Philatelic societies?
Thanks
I express my appreciation to the following:
Andrew Johnson, who encouraged me to write this article and made available material from his collection for illustrations’
David Collyer, who from time to time has corresponded with me on this subject.
William Cochrane, who has given advice and assistance on research.
National Archives of Australia, who provided Merrillees’ war records.
Chris Ceramuga, for an opinion on the overprinting of the stamps.
Staff in the research center of the Australian War Memorial, who took the time to assist me on several matters.
References
Emery, Australian Imperial Forces Postal History 1914-18 – July 1983
Emery, Australian Imperial Forces Postal History 1914-18 Supplement – Feb 1988
Rosenblum, Stamps of the Commonwealth of Australia – 4th Edition 1936
Hornadge, Cinderella Stamps of Australia – 1974
Tregarthen, Sea Transport of the AIF prepared for the National Transport Board – Government Printer Melbourne
Auction Catalogues
Rodney Perry 6 Dec. 1979
Rodney Perry 30 Aug. 1979
Ronald M. Lee 27 July 1990
Articles
W. Humphreys – The AIF overprints on KGV stamps – two articles in the Cinderella Philatelist in 1988
The Australian Stamp Monthly July 1948 – p.507
Mike Hill A.I.F. Overprints (unpublished)
