Hamburg-Amsterdam line (Amsterdamsche Stoomvaart Maatschappij)

  • Dear all,


    This is my first post in this forum, so bear with me if I didn't put this in the right category :)


    I am looking for some help with a few letters sent franco from Stockholm to the Hague in August/September 1853. Normally, these would have followed the overland route via Hannover, Minden, Hamm, Emmerich, Arnhem to the Hague, but for some reason (cholera outbreak?) they seem to have been sent by steamship from Hamburg to Amsterdam instead. Two of the letters have "G.F.Egidius" cancels on the back, indicating they were sent with the steamer "Willem de Eerste", which departed Hamburg on 5 September and arrived in Amsterdam on the 6th. The first letter was sent to Lübeck, as noted, with the steamer "Lübeck" on August 29. The second letter dated August 31 has an annotation indicating it should be sent by the steamer from Stockholm to Stettin. However, the letter must have been rerouted to Lübeck with the steamer "Gauthiod" on 1 September, since there were no Stettin departures between 30 August and 6 September from Stockholm. In that way, it seems both letters ended up together on Willem de Eerste, arriving in Amsterdam at the same time on 6 September. So far so good.


    However, along the way, they have received postage due annotations in Dutch cents, and this is what I need to understand: The letters were prepaid to the Hague, so why the postage due? Does it have something to do with a steamship surcharge, in addition to the normal postage rate, or were the letters subject to additional Dutch domestic postage since they arrived by steamship and not by land?


    The third letter is even more confusing. It arrived in Amsterday on 13 September, so two days too late for the Hamburg-Amsterdam steamer "Stoomvaart" which arrived in Amsterdam on the 11th, and it does not bear the "Egidius" cancel like the two others. On the other hand, it has a Dutch 10 cent stamp affixed and cancelled, overlapping a "franco" annotation underneath.


    Does anyone have an idea what could have happened to these letters, and what the different annotations can mean?


    Best regards, Kent


  • Hello Kent,


    welcome in the forum .

    First of all: Your pictures are very small and they don't show the details clearly.

    For the pictures you should use the format .jpg with a compression of about 50-70 % instead of .png. Then you can upload files with max. 1000 kB which show us all the interesting details for a description.


    best regards

    Dieter

  • ... just click on your own scans and you will see that it did not work. Compression too high? 300 dpi would be good.

    Liebe Grüsse vom Ralph



    "Der beste Platz für Politiker ist das Wahlplakat. Dort ist er tragbar, geräuschlos und leicht zu entfernen." Vicco von Bülow aka Loriot.




  • Hello Kent,

    I cannot see that these letters were sent franco from Stockholm since there is no Swedish post mark and no corresponding notation. If the letters were sent to Hamburg there should be a postmark from Hamburg too.
    So in my view they were partly sent privately. The postage due seems to be the domestic Netherlands postage. So may be the letters were sent just from Amsterdam?

    Regards,
    nordlicht

  • .... at least 300 dpi, better 600 or 800 dpi and reducing the size if neccessary with a free graphic program like xnview or gimp. Your first one has only 96 dpi and 352 x 198 pixels. Try to enlarge such a scan. Maybe the step of compression is too high.


    best regards

    Dieter

  • Hallo nordlicht,


    war Egidius ein Forwarder in Amsterdam? Ich finde mein Verzeichnis nicht auf der Festplatte.


    beste Grüße

    Dieter

  • Hi nordlicht; letters 2 and 3 have franco annotations, and all three letters have the red Amsterdam arrival cancel, meaning they arrived Amsterdam from somewhere else. I am trying to establish the exact connection between G.F.Egidius and ASM, but they were indeed in business together on the Hamburg-Amsterdam steamship route, so it seems pretty clear the letters were indeed onboard Willem de Eerste on its departure from Hamburg on 5 September. The fact that the letters do not have Stockholm departure cancels is not unusual; it may be because the letters were delivered directly to the steamships in Stockholm. These steamships did not carry their own cancels. But the Dutch postage due annotation is indeed unusual...

  • Thats better. :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

    Liebe Grüsse vom Ralph



    "Der beste Platz für Politiker ist das Wahlplakat. Dort ist er tragbar, geräuschlos und leicht zu entfernen." Vicco von Bülow aka Loriot.




  • Hello,


    these Scans are absolutely ok. Many thanks. :):thumbup:

    The 3 letters show at lower left corner the marking: with steamboat to Lübeck, .... Stettin, .... Stettin. The first two letters in a Nordic language (Swedish?), the third in French.

    As there are no markings than those of Amsterdam it is shure that somebody transported the letters to Netherlands. The writer of these letters had not paid postage and so it was not very expensive for the Mademoiselle Wanthin to receive the letters.


    Dieter

  • Dear Kent,


    this is what I found so far (I can read Dutch quite well and know a little Swedish, too).


    There is a link between Paul van Vlissingen, the man behind ASM, and Egidius. Vlissingen was not only a shipowner, but also a shipbuiilder and a pioneer builder of steam machines on an industrial scale at Werkspoor, see also here. His partner Dudok van Heel’s son married one of Egidius’ daughters, as did Vlissingen’s son, Paulus Cornelis.

    George Frederik Egidius wasn’t a Dutchman (1800 Copenhagen – Amsterdam 1856). He was married to Norwegian Karen. Egidius took over the hull of the “Beurs van Amsterdam” from ASM in 1849 and had it rebuilt as a sailing vessel. He ran several other sailing vessels in his own right.

    There is even a dutch book that sheds some light on the family ties between Vlissingen/ASM and, among others, Egidius.


    This might be of some interest to you, though the immediate connection with the letters in question isn’t quite there. Very often in the 19th century commercial ties were strengthened by second generation family ties. (And where 19th century politics are concerned, look for the godfathers of the politicians’ children to establish a direct connection, when trying to unravel networks of the past.)


    Best wishes

    Dietmar

    Viele Grüße aus Erding!


    Achter Kontich wonen er ook mensen!

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Hallo Kent


    I think these letter are posted in Amsterdam as the have these Amsterdam postmarks on the front. The arrival postmarks on the back sides from Gravenhage = La Haye.

    If they were posted in Sweden or Hamburg you would find postmarks from the place they were posted.

    The other mark on the backside is from the forwarder in Amsterdam. That you will hardly find when the covers were sent from Sweden or Hamburg. If the covers were sent per post via Amsterdam you would have an c/o address here.

    So I guess that the covers were delivered to somebody, maybe a ship captain, who brought the covers to Egidius in Amsterdam.

    What I find interesting ist that two of the covers is sent porto from Amsterdam and the third sent paid.

    Interesting items.


    Best wishes

    Nils

  • Thanks Nils, the “problem” here is that red ink was used for arriving mail and black for outgoing, so on the last letter you will see both a red Amsterdam arrival cancel and a black Amsterdam departure cancel on the stamp itself, meaning the letters must have arrived in Amsterdam from somewhere else. The lack of a Stockholm departure cancel is not unusual; Franco letters delivered directly to steamships in Stockholm will not have a Swedish departure cancel. Interesting nuts to crack, these letters! :)

  • Another indicator that the letters must have passed through Germany is the “1f(ranco)W(eiter) annotation on letter number 2, which will refer to 1 silbergroschen (=5 dutch cents). Such weiter Franco annotations were normally done in Germany on prepaid overland mail to the Netherlands to single out the part of total postage reimbursable to the Dutch postal service, but it may have a different reference here; 1 sgr equals transit postage through one rayon in DÖPV, for example from Lubeck to Hamburg?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Hallo Kent


    I have had a look into Delcampe and it seems that cover sent unpaid was canceled with red color and sent paid was canceled with black. So in 1853 like your covers.

    The cover with the stamp have no Amsterdam postmark, what you see on the front is from another red postmark from Gravenhage. I do not know what it is called in englisch, but in german Schmiededruck. (Stempelte er speilvendt).

    If the 1fw should be an indicator, i would believe that there was something like it on the other covers, so I do not think this is from Germany. I can not remember to have seen anything like it before.

    What I also find interesting is that all covers have this franco annotation in upper left corner. Also the cover with the stamp. I would have liked to know where this stamp have found its way to the cover. If in Sweden and from Sweden through the Swedish Post, was it possible without any treatment from the swedish Post?

    I do not know very much about the Swedish Post so I can really not help very much. But I find these letters very difficult to explain, less they are posted in Amsterdam.

    Hopefully there will be anybody else here who can help a bit more.


    Best wishes

    Nils

  • So after some deliberation, and after checking the book proposed by Erdinger above about van Vlissingen, I may have come a small step further. G.F. Egidius was the Swedish-Norwegian consul general in Amsterdam, so this might lead to a more "official" explanation for his stamp having been used on the back of the letters, and although Egidius indeed had a close personal and business relation with van Vlissingen and the ASM, it as probably more likely that the letters were stamped by Egidius upon receiving them in Amsterdam rather than the cancel having been used onboard the Hamburg-Amsterdam line, which was my first theory. This is supported by the fact that the red ink used for the Amsterdam cancel was not only used for arriving mail, but also for unpaid mail, according to Vellinga:

    https://jdlkremer.angelfire.com/VELLINGA.1676-1915.KNBF.pdf


    So I guess I might have changed my working hypothesis to something more in line with that of nils and klesammler above; upon receipt by the Swedish post office in Hamburg, the letters were given to someone (the captain?) on the Hamburg-Amsterdam line, who brought the letters with them and handed them over to the Swedish-Norwegian consul general upon arrival in Amsterdam. The consul general then forwarded the letters to their final destination. Not a procedure by the book, but still one that worked, at least for a member of the royal family ;) Thank you for challenging my thoughts - and perhaps opening my eyes - about these letters!

  • Hallo, wer meine Ambitionen in PO kennt, versteht warum die einfuehrenden Saetze der Buchvorstellung bei mir wie Honig auf dem Gaumen zerfliessen:

    Neben der traditionellen Behandlung von Tarifen und Routen wird der soziale und historische Hintergrund immer wichtiger, wenn es um postgeschichtliche Themen geht. Wer hat den Brief abgeschickt und an wen wurde er in welchem Zusammenhang verschickt? Die Antworten auf diese Fragen sind häufig nicht nur eine interessante Lektüre, sondern tragen auch zum Vergnügen beim Studium dieser Sendungen bei.

    Vielen Dank fuer den Link , sehr interessant!

    LG Andreas

  • + 1 !

    Liebe Grüsse vom Ralph



    "Der beste Platz für Politiker ist das Wahlplakat. Dort ist er tragbar, geräuschlos und leicht zu entfernen." Vicco von Bülow aka Loriot.