A ship's red rubber stamped cachet is applied to this primary recovery ship cover for USS Kearsarge's recovery of Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper on the recovery date of May 16, 1963, south of Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean. Kearsarge's recovery ship covers with this cachet are easily found by collectors, but that's not what serious collectors are trying to find, that's only part of the quest. For this cover, the significance of the cover is in its being mailed to Morris W. Beck, an astute ship cover collector and a prolific ship cover cachet maker and servicer of U.S. Navy ship covers, on Beck's printed envelope displaying his name and address. What makes this so special?
A second early Beck space related primary recovery ship cover is shown, this time on a USS Intrepid primary recovery ship cover with a ship's printed cachet. This crew cover is hand cancelled on Intrepid and mailed to Morris W. Beck May 24, 1962 on Beck's printed envelope with his name and address making it an early Beck recovery ship cover but not a part of his 1,000 ship cover series.
More importantly and more significant than the first cover shown, though, this cover is also Morris Beck's first space related U.S. Navy recovery ship cover predating the early Beck cover at the top of this article by one year. It is Beck's first space related recovery ship cover.
Space Cover #308: What, A Beck Space Cover?
Morris Beck's focused efforts making ship covers and his love of collecting ship covers resulted in his famous Beck numbered series of 1,000, the numbered series of printed Beck cacheted U.S. Navy ship covers issued from 1962 to 1975 that took the ship cover collecting community by storm in this time frame. If the ship cover collecting community was taken by storm by Beck's numbered covers, the space cover collecting community looking for Beck space related recovery ship covers was taken by a category 4 hurricane searching for Beck's impressive covers highlighting U.S. Navy ships involved in the U.S. Space Program.
A few months ago, I was going through my recovery ship covers searching for early space mission recovery ships to write an article concerning them. I found this early Morris W. Beck cover for USS Kearsarge's recovery of Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper for what I thought was possibly the earliest Beck space related recovery ship cover for a U.S. manned spaceflight recovery. The Beck cover was cancelled May 16, 1963, aboard Kearsarge in the Pacific operating area south of Midway Island. The cover is not one of the attractive printed Beck cacheted covers collectors love and usually find in Beck's 1,000 series of numbered U.S. Navy ship covers.
Surprisingly, though, and a month later, I was stunned to find an even earlier Beck space related cover cancelled May 24, 1962 on an earlier primary recovery ship, USS Intrepid, for the recovery of Project Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter. Carpenter splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after overshooting his planned touchdown point near Puerto Rico. Could this Intrepid cover be the earliest Beck space related recovery ship cover?
Both of Morris Beck's primary recovery ship covers pictured above for this Space Cover of the Week are believed to have been from Beck's personal ship cover collection due to use of Beck's personally printed and addressed envelopes. The covers are thought to be very small in number and are very difficult to find. If you have one of these early Beck space related recovery ship covers, please let me know? Now, I would like to go back to my earlier question, "What, is this a Beck Space Cover?" at the beginning of this article. Look down in the left hand corner of the USS Intrepid Beck recovery ship cover above. Do you see that space capsule in the cachet? I think you may have answered this question.
Steve Durst, SU4379
posted 03-15-2015 07:13 AM
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