Great Barrier Pigeon Post

1898 - 1904

VP 1 - The First Airmail Stamp in the World

 

​

In April 1898 Parkin decided to pull the pin.  He had picked up some additional responsibilities and decided his time was best spent doing other things.  It may be that the service wasn't paying a dividend.  Miss Springall took things into her own hands and contacted a Samuel Holden Howie, at the time an 18 year old law clerk whose hobby was racing pigeons.  

​

Long story short - he jumped at the chance and he quickly upped the ante.

​

In October 1898 a Mr Henry Bolitho, a keen philatelist, approached Howie about producing a stamp.  Howie was supportive.  In his seminal work, 'The Great Barrier Island 1898-1899 Pigeon Post Stamps' Reg Walker recounts the agreed business proposal:

​

• A 1/- stamp would be more popular than a 1/6 stamp

• So reduce the cost of the service to match the face value of the stamp

• Mr Bolitho subsidise Mr Howie 3d for every bird arriving with a message bearing a stamp.

• Mr Bolitho would be responsible for producing the stamps.

 

Based upon this basic business proposal, Bolitho started work on the fist Great Barrier Island Pigeon stamps - the first purpose designed airmail stamps in the world.

​

Mr Bolitho worked with the Observer Printing Works in Auckland to develop and produce the first stamps.  The first stamps were available in October and the first known use was November 1898. (earlier beliefs of an October stamped flimsy have not been confirmed).

​

Of interest, the bird at the centre of this design is a swallow, not a pigeon!  The stamps were printed in sheets of 18 in a three by six format.  A single die was created from three impressions, and so the sheet had to be run through the machine six times, thus leading to different alignment of the stamps on different sheets.  The only order submitted was for 100 sheets, so 1800 stamps were produced, but it is estimated that only 300 stamps were used and the other 1500 sold to collectors and dealers.

 

As an interesting aside, when the stamps first appeared on the market in the UK their genuineness was in doubt and so the editor of the London Philatelist wrote to the NZ Postal Department who replied that the stamps had never been used for any postal purpose!  Got to love the bureaucrats! However further research by the philatelists in London uncovered the story and interest in the stamps grew.