4 May 1862 Confederate States Navy USS VIRGINIA/MERRIMACK drop-letter rate cover

Description

Confederate States Navy
"
MERRIMACK
"
/
drop-letter rate
mail: MAY 4 [1862]
postmarked outer lettersheet (light-blue lined writing paper) to Mrs.
H. Ashton Ramsay
,
Care of
D?Arcy Paul, Esq., PETERSBURG [Virginia], franked 5 cents using a single blue CSA 4-2 stamp with large to full margins, affixed with red sealing wax & tied by single strike of local postmark in
blue
.
The postage paid
reflects the period letter rate
, until 1 July 1862, for distances under 500 miles;
the postage could also cover the period rate for inland waterway mail
- reasonable in this circumstance, and if the cover was carried in a locked bag by a vessel contracted to carry such mail, the cover
did not
need to be specially marked as such. Nevertheless,
as addressed "
care of
", the postage paid was actually an overpayment of the 2 cent drop letter rate
(eg. mailed to a local address at a post office without delivery service, and picked up by the addressee as like "poste restante" mail - in Civil War mail
often
evidenced by "care of" addresses
); here
overpaid because pre-franked
by the sender.
Pencil notation on top left "
Written on
Ram Virginia
" by the husband of the addressee,
Henry Ashton Ramsay
, the
Chief Engineer
on the
CSS Virginia
(commissioned into the Confederate Navy on 10 June 1861 and previously served in the US Navy). The co-addressee,
Captain D'Arcy W. Paul
served as an officer in Company K of the 12th Regiment Virginia Infantry, Mahone's Division, in A. P. Hill's 3rd Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia; he was accidentally killed by a falling tree on 20 January 1863. Ex Warren collection.
The CSS Virginia, also known as "Ram Virginia", was an ironclad ram of the Confederate Navy built from the hull of the scuttled USS Merrimack, part of the CSN's James River Squadron, and together with the USS Monitor it
fought the world's first battle between ironclads
, at Hampton Roads on 8-9 March;
this letter was posted further up the James River a week before (11 May) the ship was scuttled near Portsmouth on the mouth of the river
. Historic postal history from a key participant in maritime history.
A curiosity:
Confederate active service members were
eligible for free postage
(with the addressee bearing the cost). Though instituted for the Army, members of the Navy & Marines also made use of this exemption. The postage here may have been pre-paid as a courtesy, as the letter was actually being received by someone else for Ramsay's wife.
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