A popular category of philatelic study is disaster mail. Mail interrupted or damaged by a disaster such as a flood, fire, ship or plane wreck, war, etc. Below is an envelope recovered from the shipwreck of the S.S. Dakota, a passenger and cargo steamship that traveled the Pacific. The Dakota wrecked when she struck a reef off the coast of Japan near Yokohama on March 3, 1907. The ship was close enough to shore to avoid any deaths, and the passengers and cargo, including mail, were evacuated before she sunk.
Ninety-four shipwrecked passengers were transported to a nearby lighthouse and hamlets in a sparsely populated area. Two days later, the steamer Hakuai Maru arrived to carry the passengers and ten bags of mail to Yokohama. The surviving mail was severely water damaged. The cover shown below was sent from Montana to a U.S. Army Transport ship (USAT Logan) stationed in Nagasaki, Japan, and was franked with five 2¢ Washington stamps, as evident from the ghostly red stain on the right side. Feb 10, 1907, Missoula & Hamilton R.P.O postmark would have tied the ten cents of postage, paying twice the UPU letter rate for up to one ounce.
Hamilton, Montana, advertising cover damaged in the wreck of S.S. Dakota.
Mail aboard the wrecked ship was salvaged and subsequently delivered. A makeshift postal label in Japanese and English applied to the top of the cover, explaining, “Soaked and damaged in the wreck of Dakota. — Tokio (sic) Post Office”
Tokio Post Office manuscript label explaining the damage.
The damaged cover was also resealed with Japanese official seal stamps.
The reverse of the cover with Japanese official seals.
This is one of my favorite pieces in my collection. Please share any other info about the S.S. Dakota or other disaster covers or cards.
More info on the wreck of S.S. Dakota can be found at Wikipedia and WreckSite.eu.