Postage stamps and postal history of the Danish West Indies
Encyclopedia
St Thomas was a hub of the West Indies packet
Package delivery
Package delivery or parcel delivery is the shipping of packages or high value mail as single shipments. While the service is provided by most postal systems, private package delivery services have also existed in competition with and in place of public postal services.-Package delivery in the...

 service from 1851 to 1885. Initially mail was transported by a Spanish packet to and from Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

; but in July 1867 the British picked up the mail contract, and packet letters are known using British stamps as late as 1879.

The first postage stamp
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...

 of the Danish West Indies
Danish West Indies
The Danish West Indies or "Danish Antilles", were a colony of Denmark-Norway and later Denmark in the Caribbean. They were sold to the United States in 1916 in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies and became the United States Virgin Islands in 1917...

 was issued in 1856. It had the same square coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

 design as the contemporary stamps of Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, but it was denominated 3 cents and of a dark carmine
Carmine
Carmine , also called Crimson Lake, Cochineal, Natural Red #4, C.I. 75470, or E120, is a pigment of a bright-red color obtained from the aluminum salt of carminic acid, which is produced by some scale insects, such as the cochineal beetle and the Polish cochineal, and is used as a general term for...

 color on yellowish paper. A yellow burelage
Burelage
Burelage , also burelé, is a French term referring to an intricate network of fine lines, dots or other designs printed over or as the background of some postage or revenue stamps to prevent counterfeiting...

 of wavy lines covered the stamp. (In the illustration at right, it is most easily seen along the bottom edge of the larger version.) An 1866 printing was on white paper, with the direction of the burelage lines changed, and in 1872 the stamps were perforated
Perforation
A perforation is a small hole in a thin material or web. There is usually more than one perforation in an organized fashion, where all of the holes are called a perforation...

. In 1873 a 4c value in dull blue was issued.

1874 saw the first numeral issues of the same sort as used in Denmark. Values ranged from 1c to 50c; all were bi-colored. Inverted frames are common for several of the lower values.

As usual for small colonies far away, the Danish West Indies ran out of popular values periodically, and the colonial administration had to improvise. A 1c surcharge
Overprint
An overprint is an additional layer of text or graphics added to the face of a postage stamp or banknote after it has been printed. Post offices most often use overprints for internal administrative purposes such as accounting but they are also employed in public mail...

 was printed on 7c stamps in 1887, and a 10c surcharge on 50c in 1895. An additional supply of numeral types in new colors came out between 1896 and 1901.

Single-color 1c and 5c stamps were issued in 1900 to meet UPU
Upu
Upu, also called Apu , was the region surrounding Damascus of the 1350 BC Amarna letters. Damascus was named Dimašqu/Dimasqu/ etc. Upu, also called Apu (and Ubi or Upi by some authors), was the region surrounding Damascus of the 1350 BC Amarna letters. Damascus was named Dimašqu/Dimasqu/ etc. Upu,...

 regulations. Shortages of 2c and 8c values led to more surcharges in 1902, rectified in the following year by an issue of those values using the arms design of 1900. Postage due
Postage due
Postage due is the term used for mail sent with insufficient postage. A postage due stamp is a stamp added to an underpaid piece of mail to indicate the extra postage due.- Background :...

 stamps first appeared in 1902 also.

As a result of the currency reform, in 1905, new stamps were issued. Values from 5b to 50b had a silhouette
Silhouette
A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black. Although the art form has been popular since the mid-18th century, the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades...

 of King Christian IX
Christian IX of Denmark
Christian IX was King of Denmark from 16 November 1863 to 29 January 1906.Growing up as a prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a junior branch of the House of Oldenburg which had ruled Denmark since 1448, Christian was originally not in the immediate line of succession to the Danish...

, while 1fr, 2fr, and 5fr depicted the sailing ship
Sailing ship
The term sailing ship is now used to refer to any large wind-powered vessel. In technical terms, a ship was a sailing vessel with a specific rig of at least three masts, square rigged on all of them, making the sailing adjective redundant. In popular usage "ship" became associated with all large...

 Ingolf in St. Thomas harbor. New postage dues were required as well. Additional 5b stamps were produced by surcharging older stamps.

A definitive series of 1907 depicted Frederick VIII
Frederick VIII of Denmark
Frederick VIII was King of Denmark from 1906 to 1912.-Early life:Frederick was born on 3 June 1843 in the Yellow Palace in Copenhagen as Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a junior male line of the House of Oldenburg descended from Christian III of Denmark and who had...

, followed in 1915 by a series for Christian X
Christian X of Denmark
Christian X was King of Denmark from 1912 to 1947 and the only King of Iceland between 1918 and 1944....

.

A few types are cheaply available today, such as the low values of the 1907 issue, but most fall into the US$10-20 range. Because the letter-writing population was very small, perhaps just a few hundred persons, used copies are often valued more highly by collectors, and both forged and favor cancellations are known to have been made.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK