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SS Rio de Janeiro in port at Nagasaki, Japan - 1894
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Features a 1-cent blue United States postal stationery indicia printed directly onto a buff-colored envelope.
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Stamped with a San Francisco, CAL. circular date stamp (CDS) dated AUG 25, 1892, 6 PM.
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Sender: Cutting Packing Co., based in San Francisco, U.S.A. (a notable pioneering fruit and vegetable canning company of the era).
This is a significant piece of US Postal History, an outstanding trans-Pacific steamship cover out of San Francisco on board the "SS City of Rio de Janeiro" -
Aug. 25, 1892. It's easy to make it yours! -- click here --
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Canceled with a traditional duplex cork/killer strike.
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In the lower-left corner, it bears a clear, faint purple linear handstamp reading: "CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO"
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Recipient: Messrs. Arnhold, Karberg & Co., located at 10 Nanking Road, Shanghai, China. This was one of the largest and most influential foreign trading houses (hongs) operating in late imperial China.
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The letter was processed and canceled at the San Francisco Post Office at 6:00 PM on August 25, 1892, explicitly matching the scheduled late-afternoon/evening departure of the City of Rio de Janeiro on its transpacific mail run.
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Transpacific Route:
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Honolulu, Hawaii: Serving as a primary coal and mail stopover (roughly 6–7 days out of San Francisco).
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Yokohama, Japan: The initial Asian port of call, reached in mid-September (typically a 16 to 18-day steam from Hawaii).
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Shanghai, China (Destination): Mail destined for Shanghai was offloaded either at Yokohama or Nagasaki and transferred to a regional connecting branch-line steamer, or dropped directly via a scheduled coastal tender, arriving approximately 24 to 28 days after leaving California.
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Vessel: SS City of Rio de Janeiro (3,548 gross tons, iron screw steamer built in 1878).
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Command: During this late 1892 period, the vessel was under the command of Captain William Ward (who would later tragically go down with the vessel when it sank in 1901).
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Mail Processing: The purple linear handstamp "CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO." was applied by the ship's purser or mail agent onboard the vessel. This was standard protocol to denote that the letter was carried under international sea-post regulations via a designated contract mail steamer rather than standard civilian cargo.
Handwritten on this 1898 photograph,
"CALIF BOYS." --
In 1898, the "California crew" or "California Boys" aboard the SS City of Rio de Janeiro refers to volunteer infantry troops from California deployed as part of the Spanish-American War Expeditionary Forces.
The U.S. government temporarily leased and chartered the Pacific Mail liner, converting her into a military transport ship (USAT City of Rio de Janeiro) to ferry these soldiers from San Francisco to Manila in the Philippines.