Papar post office

As a settlement, Papar clearly predated Jesselton. Even though it had a district office, the post office was not opened until 1949. Prior to that the mail services were well served by the Travelling Post Office as the train on the west coast passes by the town.

This is a nice cover with Papar D1 in black. It is more often in violet. There are a few philatelic covers like this with the 1949 UPU set. This date was in use between September 1949 and May 1950. It is characterised by wavy lines in the two rings as a result of damage and distortion.

Examples of Papar D1 in black and violet

          D1 in violet on piece

With time, this rubber hand-stamp deteriorated probably as a result of using the wrong solvent cleaner and gave rise to this unclear cancellation.

With the D1 hand-stamp getting damaged to the point of giving a very poor and unclear impression, a new date stamp was introduced in May 1950 and used until July 1951. This is yet another temporary rubber hand-stamp. I find the above cover very attractive with red Chinese characters. The address of this little known photo studio should of much interest to local historians. This is what one would describe as a well constructed cover in that most of the spaces on the envelope were suitably occupied. Blank spaces are not attractive. Papar D2 is in violet and I have not seen it in black.

Papar D2 on piece

Another two other items with D2

This is Papar D4 (June 61-September 63). This is a star cancel and quite uncommon on cover. This item had suffered some water staining but is still quite attractive with a plethora of cancellations from Papar, Jesselton, Singapore and Penang.

Papar D3

Papar D4

The North Borneo Sun Bear on stamps

One of our readers has request a post on the Sun Bear stamps. I do apologise for not having submitted any new material for some time. I hope this will be rectified gradually so long there are people who are interested in this blog. 

The Sun Bear first appeared on stamps of North Borneo in 1902 as part of the beautiful 1897-1902 pictorial set printed by Waterlow & Sons. Somehow it was omitted from subsequent stamp sets until the 1961 series printed by both Waterlow and De La Rue. With the name change to Sabah in 1963, the overprinted set appeared in 1964.

These were issued in 1902 and are available in 2 shades. The left is deep brown & slate-iliac and the right is brown & slate blue. The second one is more uncommon but unfortunately, the stamp shown has a fake cancellation, a folly that I committed in my earlier days of collecting. 

Then they were overprinted also in 1902. The two shades are shown here and the third one is a variety that has no stop after "Protectorate"

The postage due is on the overprinted stamp and strangely the original stamp without the "British Protectorate" overprint was not issued. This is the more expensive blue and I probably the other one somewhere.

This is an example of the overprinted 10c stamp on a post card. The most important thing here is the beautifully clear square circle cancellation from Tenom on the stamp. One can see also that on its way to Rome Italy, it passed through Jesselton, Labuan and Singapore.

Again this was sent from Tenom and this time in June 1964 with the 1961 4c stamp. Along side is the triple ring Sabah Malaysia cachet in violet which was used only for the month of June in 1964.

This is a rare example of North Borneo stamps used in a Malayan state. This was sent from Pahang in June 1964. The stamps were valid throughout Malaysia from May 1964.

This is a beautiful cover sent from Beaufort in 1965 with the overprinted stamps. The rate here should have been 12c with a registration fee of 25c and it was 1c overpaid.

This is a very uncommon situation with usage of the 1961 and 1964 stamps together. This is on a postcard to USA.

This is an example of use in Singapore. The postmark is not clear but it should be the Dempsey Road Singapore 10 post office. Okay, I have shown here a variety of Sun Bear stamps from North Borneo/Sabah in different modes of usage and guises.

 

Hong Kong paquebot cancellations on North Borneo stamps

From its foundation in 1879, Sandakan have been closely aligned with Hong Kong in terms of trade and immigration. At one time, Sandakan was described as "Little Hong Kong" not in terms of appearance, I dare say and more due to the Cantonese dialect being widely spoken. This is in contrast to the other towns in North Borneo/Sabah where Hakka is more predominant. Not only that, Hong Kong Cantonese type cuisine (which means little or no chilies) was much in evidence as well as Cantonese customs. The largest and nearly the oldest Chinese trading house in Sandakan and North Borneo for a very long time was Man Woo Loong, ran by a family of brothers originating from Hong Kong. 

Ships went directly between Sandakan and Hong Kong on a roughly monthly basis for most of the years in the first half of the 20th century. The most famous of these was the Mau Sang it went as far as Tawau. These ship was part of the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company which was owned by the biggest Hong Kong based British Company of Jardine Matheson. They made it big initially by having a dominant position in the China opium trade. In addition, the SS Borneo which belonged the German Norddeutscher Lloyd line also ventured between Sandakan and HK. But with the onset of WWl, NDL stopped operating worldwide and the Mau Sang was joined by the Hin Sang from the same company.

The Mau Sang at the pier in Sandakan in the 1930s

This is the Hosking Hong Kong paquebot chop number 1486 which was in use 1917-1925. The 2c and the 25c stamp also has the concurrent HK cancel but the date is not clear.

These are also paquebot use of North Borneo stamps on mail posted on ships on their way to Hong Kong. The procedure in the earlier days was to cancel the stamps with a circular date stamp and then chopped the paquebot cachet elsewhere on the envelope. This procedure was somewhat reversed later on as seen in the stamps earlier on. The 10c overprint has an early date of  OC 7 95 and the similar HK cds on the 4c orangutan has the year only visible of 01. The Victoria Hong Kong cancellations on the 5c and 10c stamps have the dates of  10 SP 06 and 27 JA 04 respectively.

Zamboanga paquebot cancellation on North Borneo stamps

The following stamps have the Zamboanga, Rec'd / Mindanao P.I. cancellation. I have seen the Jolo version on cover with the cancellation on 2 x 5c British Protectorate overprinted North Borneo stamps. These are the Philippines paquebot cancellations with REC'D (Received) in place of PAQUEBOT.

 

dated OCT 19 11 AM 1908

dated 1908 MAY 21 ? A M

dated 1908 NOV 30 8AM

Zamboanga City was founded in the late 12th century and is situated on the island of Mindanao. Its proximity to Jolo in Sulu and the east coast of North Borneo made it an important hinterland and trading partner. The ships of the Norddeutscher Lloyd such as the SS Sabah, Darvel, Labuan and Tringganu made regular round trips from Singapore via Labuan, Jesselton, Kudat and Sandakan to Jolo or Zamboanga bringing along local businessman like W G Darby. The trading house and insurance agency of Behn, Meyer & Co Ltd had offices in Sandakan and Zamboanga.  

On a similar vein, this RECEIVED AT LABUAN cancel was probably an earlier or earliest form of paquebot cancellation from Labuan. Proud listed the earliest formal paquebot cancellation of Labuan from November 1910. You may wonder why the 2c Labuan stamp would receive a local paquebot cancel. Well, Labuan stamps of that period were valid in North Borneo and vice versa because Labuan was under BNBC administration from 1894 to 1906.

A 1933 Tenom District Office receipt

 

These sort of receipts generally did not generally survive as the paper tends to dry out and becomes quite brittle and delicate. $1.50 was received by the Tenom District Office from the Civil District Judge at Singapore. This was the cost of three affidavits supporting the services of Singapore civil summonses. It was signed by Bendos Santos who was probably a clerk working the Tenom District Office. The acting DO was J S Hill. J S Hill was, I presume, a proficient Hakka speaker as he passed the Higher Standard Hakka Examination in October 1933.

This governmental chop is rarely seen as it was not used on stamps and probably only on flimsy receipts like this. It has been reconstructed as seen here from whatever visual clues that are present. Enjoy! 

From an earlier post on this blog, a rare Sanbride postcard view of part of Tenom around 1918.

Jesselton D6 in violet

 

Jesselton Proud D6 (Sep 09 - Nov 13) is not an uncommon cancellation. It is normally in black but sometimes it is in deep violet. Two examples on adhesives are shown and  also on a postcard.

5 SEP 1911

18 NOV 1909

19 NOV 1909

This is the day after that of the 2c PD adhesive, pretty incredible!

Some early Lahad Datu cancellations

 

The Lahad Datu area has a history of native human settlement from as early as the 15th  century. To the east was the pirate settlement of Tunku or Tungku which was obliterated by HMS Kestrel around early November 1879 under the command of F Edwards. After this, a government experimental garden was established at Silam in 1883. Lahad Datu as a township started in November 1897 to service the New Darvel Bay and Segama tobacco plantations in the vicinity. The post office was established at Silam around 1888 was transferred to Lahad Datu in 1897. From the 1897 BNB Herald was found the following notice:

The Lahad Datu post office started off by using the Silam postal seal in blue before the local postal date stamp arrived in January 1898. This Silam is rightly one of the most sought after and coveted of postal postal cancellations from North Borneo and covers command a high price. On stamps, it is very uncommon to get such a good strike. I bought a whole stamp book and fortunately not at a high price just for this stamp. So there are still gems to be found in basic low value collections.

This is Proud's D1 (4 1 98 - 1 8 00). I think the 10c stamp has the year 1900 omitted and is the new latest known date or LKD of D1. The ink colour here is deep violet. The other two were postmarked 1899 and one the Jan one has deep violet ink as well while the Oct item has its cancellation in black.

This is D3 which is not uncommon. The earlier ones in 1903 are also in deep violet. D3 was from 1902 to 1909.

This D4 is the first BNB type. The date here of 14 JAN 1910 is the earliest known date. Proud has it between 22 6 10 and 13 8 12.