Auction 333-341 Europe & Overseas - Day 5

Austrian DDSG P.O. in Beirut 1839 (Sept 14): Entire letter from Beirut to the Sardinian Consul in Aleppo, struck by extremely rare double-circle "D.D.S.G. / BAYROUTH / P.P." handstamp in black, applied on the DDSG shipping line Smyrna - Beirut - Alexandria, internal archival note gives September 24 as date of receipt. Cert. Puschmann (2000).

Note: The DDSG was founded in 1829 and was originally thought to provide transport and postal services on the Danube and some of its tributary rivers such as Tisza and Save. However, already in the 1830s it extended its services far beyond that river into the Black Sea and even into the Marmara and Aegean Seas. At the end of this decade postal services from Beirut and Jaffa were offered. Tranmer mentions in his treatise on the Austrian Post Offices abroad, part 8 (1976) on p. 21 that the creation of a Constantinople - Beirut - Alexandria line of the DDSG was decided in 1838 but no material is recorded. With a first journey on 1 June 1839, the vessel ‘Seri Pervas’ was running the line Smyrna - Chios - Cos - Rhodes - Larnaca down to Alexandretta, from August 1839 further via Beirut & Jaffa down to Alexandria.  But already in July 1840 during the Egyptian - Ottoman War and finally with a severe accident of the 'Seri Pervas' the history of this line found its end. DDSG services in the Eastern Mediterranean in general have been short living, as already in 1845 all DDSG agencies outside the Danube (and Odessa as exception) were taken over by the Austrian Lloyd, the two companies were dividing 'the world of shipmail' between themselves.
The present cover is one of three recorded with a DDSG BAYROUTH handstamp, the second written two weeks later on September 23, 1839 and directed to the Sardinian Consul in Alexandria, and the last one accepted by the Beirut DDSG agency as late as July 1841, one year after closure of the DDSG Syrian coast line. All were unknown to Müller in his monograph dealing with Austrian pre-stamp mail (1960) and its two supplements, and as already mentioned also in Tranmer - Austrian Post Offices Abroad, part 8 (1976). The present BAYROUTH cover shows the earliest postmark recorded from any postal service used in Beirut, much earlier than any French or Russian service available.

Provenance: Collection Cihangir, Corinphila sale 121 (May 2000), lot 1892.