Cape Post Office Driven to Extraordinary Measures — Valuable Consignment Said to Have Been Lying in Cape Town for Months
CAPE TOWN, February 1861. — Special Report
A most extraordinary state of affairs has come to light in connection with the supply of postage stamps for this Colony, and one which must surely occasion considerable embarrassment in official circles.
For months past the public has been warned, either directly or by the increasing scarcity of the familiar triangular postage labels, that the stocks of the Cape Post Office were running dangerously low. The difficulty has now become so serious that measures have been taken to manufacture stamps within the Colony itself.
Yet it would appear that the very stamps for which the Colony has been waiting have, in fact, been here all along.
We understand that a considerable consignment of the one-penny and four-penny stamps ordered from Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co. in London reached Cape Town last year. The cases, however, became entangled in an extraordinary difficulty concerning the shipping papers and were detained in the Customs establishment, apparently without the Post Office being able to obtain possession of them.
Thus has the remarkable spectacle been presented of the Colony possessing its required postage stamps while the Post Office, believing its supplies exhausted, has been compelled to seek another remedy.
THE SHORTAGE BECOMES ACUTE
The triangular stamps have become so indispensable to the correspondence of the Colony that their scarcity has caused increasing inconvenience among merchants, shipping houses and the general public.
Letters must be posted, accounts must be settled and commercial correspondence must proceed, yet the supply of the ordinary stamps has steadily diminished.
The four-penny denomination, in particular, is required in large quantities for correspondence travelling beyond the immediate neighbourhood of Cape Town.
Rather than permit the postal service to be brought to a standstill, authority has now been given for the production of an emergency supply within the Colony.
Messrs. Saul Solomon & Co., printers of this town, have accordingly undertaken the work.
A COLONIAL SUBSTITUTE
The new stamps are being produced locally under circumstances of considerable haste.
The familiar triangular design has been retained, but the workmanship is necessarily different from that of the stamps produced in London. The dies have been prepared locally, and the resulting impressions already attract considerable attention from those accustomed to the neat workmanship of the Perkins Bacon issues.
There is little doubt that these stamps are being produced out of necessity rather than choice.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that the authorities would willingly have undertaken such an operation had the London supply been readily available.
But the Post Office cannot conduct its business upon appearances, and with its stock exhausted or nearly so, immediate action has become imperative.
WHERE ARE THE MISSING STAMPS?
The question now being asked throughout the town is a simple one:
If the stamps ordered from England arrived in Cape Town, why were they not delivered to the Post Office?
The answer appears to lie in the shipping documentation.
The necessary bill of lading associated with the consignment was apparently unavailable, with the consequence that the cases could not be released in the ordinary manner.
The stamps were therefore detained in the Customs warehouse.
There is something almost comical in the circumstance, were it not for the inconvenience being caused to the public.
A valuable consignment has crossed half the globe, reached the very harbour for which it was destined, and yet has proved of no practical assistance to the institution which ordered it.
Meanwhile, the Post Office has been obliged to commission another supply at considerable expense.
AN EXPENSIVE OVERSIGHT
The matter deserves more than a passing inquiry.
The Colony is separated from Great Britain by thousands of miles of ocean. Every shipment of postal materials must necessarily be planned months in advance. A shortage cannot be remedied merely by sending a messenger to London.
The maintenance of an adequate reserve is therefore essential.
If reports now circulating are correct, the difficulty was not caused by the stamps failing to be manufactured in England, nor by their being lost at sea.
They arrived.
They reached Cape Town.
They were apparently within the Customs establishment.
And still the Post Office found itself without them.
It is a circumstance which ought surely to receive the fullest investigation.
THE NEW STAMPS
The locally produced stamps will, no doubt, be regarded by the public with some curiosity.
Their appearance is less refined than that of the ordinary London issues, but necessity has dictated their production, and the Colony cannot afford to wait indefinitely for supplies to emerge from official warehouses.
It has also been observed that the manufacture of the new stamps presents difficulties of its own.
The work must be undertaken with great care, for the two denominations differ chiefly in their inscriptions and colour, and an error in the preparation of the printing plates could result in confusion at the Post Office counter.
Such an eventuality would scarcely surprise anyone who has observed the hurried circumstances under which the present emergency has arisen.
WHO IS TO BLAME?
At present it would be premature to assign responsibility.
The Customs authorities may point to the missing shipping papers.
The Post Office may point to the absence of notification.
The shipping interests may point to the documentation required before the cases could be released.
And the printers, who have now been called upon to rescue the situation, can hardly be blamed for the shortage.
But somewhere between London, the Cape harbour, the Customs warehouse and the Post Office, an important piece of information has evidently failed to reach the person who required it.
The public is entitled to know how this occurred.
For the present, however, the Colony must content itself with its locally manufactured stamps and await the resolution of the difficulty.
There is a certain irony in the whole affair.
The Cape has gone to the expense of producing its own postage stamps because it was believed that the supply from England had failed.
Yet, according to the information now reaching us, the missing stamps were never missing at all.
They were here — lying in a warehouse.
