Seapost -> Catalogue of Ocean Letters
Marconi and Danish Ocean Letters
a catalogue work in progress
By Otto Kjærgaard
Ocean letter to Franklin Roosevelt cancelled in New York on 9 February 1933 to the
future President of the USA in the new more functional design when Marconi had changed the name into
British Wireless Marine Service.
I collect ocean letters and discussed them (by email) quite extensively with Roger Hosking when he was alive. I am trying to make a catalogue of ocean letters. I discovered that there are more types than the ones in Hosking's marvellous ground breaking books. I hope by putting part of my work with this catalogue on the website that others will contribute by sending scans of the types I do not have, and colour scans of the ones in grey. Hopefully, many will contribute by making improvements, additions, and corrections of my mistakes. I hope to publish the catalogue as a book in the future and hope those who contribute will allow me to use their scans as illustrations.
I have put up the Marconi section and hope to receive help to fill out the gaps. The numbering is mine, but in brackets I refer to Hosking's types, and where there are no brackets, it is what I believe to be an additional type, unrecorded in Hosking's books. There are a lot of question marks. Please, help clarify them.
I believe the catalogue of the Danish ocean letters is almost complete, but if you have additions or corrections, I would most obliged. Any questions on the Danish ones are most welcome.
I also lack some illustrations for the German, Dutch, Belgian, French, and Italian ocean letters, but if I can find cooperative collectors, I believe a marvellous catalogue can be made on this most interesting area. I am still working on these ocean letters and therefore most interested in scans, from these countries also.
Being a non-native English speaker, I hope you will excuse my English and contribute to improving it. Please send scans - preferably in 300 dpi (front and back sides please) to: .
The objective of this web page is to motivate collectors to look for similar items in their collection and to ask them to alert us to any new information. Hopefully I can fill many gaps through the help of the community and I thank everybody for checking the list and for any information received.
Finally, for members and visitors not familiar with this subject, I hope you find the background information included in each section to be of interest.
Otto Kjærgaard
May 2017
Ocean Letter Catalogue sections:
The lists are provided as a PDF document which may be viewed online or downloaded for printing, reference and review.
1) The Marconi International Marine Communication Company Ocean Letters
(0.93Mb)[May 2017 edition]
2) Danish Ocean Letters
(2.5Mb)[May 2017 edition]
To save a document you are recommended to click on the download icon with your right mouse button and select the 'save link as / save target as' function to save the document directly to a folder on your computer hard drive.
References:
The following will be found very useful:
An Introduction to Ocean Letters, by Roger Hosking,
TPO & Seapost Society, 2002
Ocean Letters - A Sequel, by Roger Hosking,
TPO & Seapost Society, 2006
Overview of Ocean Letters by Roger Hosking: click to view.
