Over the years I’ve recovered a few artifacts related to our ship; the aluminum sailor’s knot with the ship’s name, date of launch and date of keeling, launching and commissioning; the mailbag tag possibly from the last mailbag to be sent off the ship on July 1, 1943 (yet to be verified); a couple of official photographs of the moment the torpedo hit the ship, presumably taken by photographer Allan Jackson; and a naval cover or “cachet” distributed and postmarked on the day of the launch. This particular item is intriguing and is part of a long history of stationary related to naval history. In researching the envelope I found a wonderful website that has a veritable plethora of information on these items as they relate to naval ships, and so much more. A little history first.
     Back in 1908 Navy ships opened the first post offices on board the vessels, doing their own distribution and postmarking of any correspondence leaving the ship. Many ships had distinct and unique artistic renderings on the envelopes, referred to as “cachets”, some were quite colorful and true works of art. Collectors of stationary began to see the value in collecting these pieces of paper history and in 1932 the Universal Ship Cancellation Society was formed. The USCS helped collectors document the history of these ships as they fought in various conflicts across the globe. Every year or event the ship survived was documented in some way using the envelopes with dated postmarks. Due to its short life, the DD-467 only had the one that I’ve learned about, the artist being George Neumann. The second Strong DD-758 has many from it’s decades of service in 3 wars: WWII, Korea and Viet Nam, with the launch cachet being depicted on the Memories of Strong page of our website.
     The USCS website has a much more complete history of the society and of the naval cover collection process, more than I can do justice to here. They also have loads of resources including data sheets on subjects such as: US Navy Branch Numbers WWII; all the ships in Pearl Harbor from the day of the attack on December 7, 1941 and the ships in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945 at the treaty signing; The Famous Fifty, all the destroyers the US traded to the UK in order to gain military presence there, and so much more. By the way, remember that Captain Wellings was one of the esteemed officers also traded in this exchange for 10 months during 1940-1941 to help train British troops on these and other ships as they fought the good fight in the European theater.
     Also on their site is a link to the Naval Covers Museum, a digital archive of their collection. I was able to add the image of the DD-467 and DD-758 covers thanks to curator Greg Ciesielski. Already shown was an envelope from a letter sent home to his girl by Frances “Frank” Edward Lee, RM3c from Strong already in their collection. The link below will take you straight to this page and the other link to the home page for the USCS. Greg has added a link to our site on their page and I have returned the favor by adding a link to them as well.
     If you are interested in learning more or becoming a collector, this site will help teach you what you need to know. Ebay is an excellent source for purchasing covers of all types, decades, conflicts and artistic examples. This is where I found the covers I have. I’ve only ever found 3 for the DD-467, so they are rare as hen’s teeth. Check out the vast information on this USCS website. Many of us are socked in either by COVID or by current weather conditions, so this is the perfect time to do a little learning. Have fun and if you have any questions feel free to contact me or any of the representatives listed in their contacts.
Stay safe all!
Tammi
​Strong Cachet Page
USCS Home Page