To coinclude our month long tribute to Apollo 13 on its 40th anniversary, I have chosen two Prime Recovery Ship Covers fron the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2). Both covers have the Beck printed cachet #B838 with 668 covers having this printed cachet. Note the difference in the hand cancels; the difference being the location of the ship's name. Most ships had more than one hand cancel on board.
Apollo 13 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970 four miles from the prime recovery ship. For those interested in Morris beck covers and prime recovery ship covers, I highly recommend two websites. The first one is Owen Murray's website. This site is a reference tool about Morris Beck and the covers he serviced. The second site is the Space Unit website. In the dropdown menu, click on recovery ship covers. The SU webmaster maintains this site.
------------------ John Macco Space Unit #1457
Ross Member
Posts: 472 From: Australia Registered: Jul 2003
posted 04-26-2010 09:25 AM
A couple of nice covers from John. However, there are two varieties of the 'ship's name at the bottom of the cancel' version. John has shown the Date skewed version. There is also a normal Date version as shown below. Neither variation is particularly scarce. In addition the two varieties appear to be quite constant with no 'in between' variation. Does this indicate a third hand cancel?