Byrd Antarctic Issue

Because the stamp was not intended for use on domestic mail, it was only sold through the Philatelic Agency of the Post Office Department. Nonetheless, the public soon inquired whether this new stamp could be used as postage on regular domestic mail, which it could.

On October 2, 1933, Richard Byrd wrote the postmaster general to thank him and all concerned, saying, "This recognition has helped us immeasurably in a number of ways."

President Franklin Roosevelt supposedly sketched the original design for this issue. Note that he signed and dated the sketch "4/25/34[35]."

Charles F. Anderson, special representative of the postmaster general, was assigned to the post office at Little America. He left Washington, D.C., on November 7, 1934, arrived in San Francisco on November 10, and sailed for Auckland, New Zealand, on November 13. He carried five full pouches of mail, seventeen empty pouches, a canceling machine, and other equipment. Five more arrived before he left for Little America. When he reached the continent, a dog sled transferred the mail and equipment to Little America, a distance of ten miles. To his dismay, he found that mail shipped a year earlier had never been cancelled and was sitting exposed under ice and snow. Anderson had only sixteen days in which to set-up the post office, cancel, and pack the mail. Expedition leaders had no conception of the difficulties involved. For instance, conditions twenty feet below the ice surface were abysmal, providing only enough heat to keep the ink warm enough to flow; water leaked overhead; and inadequate workspace where personal belongings and bedding often disappeared.

Cancelled mail was wrapped in waterproof paper, packed in cartons, encased in two heavy mail sacks, and locked. It was then stored in a tent outdoors, waiting to be loaded on to the next ship. Determined to cancel all the mail, Anderson slept only eighteen hours in sixteen days. "For the first time in the history of polar exploration a mail train was made up of dog sledges drawn by a tractor and with this train, I left Little America at noon February 4," he wrote. "Arriving at the barrier, at the edge of Eleanor Bolling Bay . . . I waited alone for twenty-six hours, without food or water, [until] the 'Bear of Oakland' . . . could be brought in through the braking ice." Back in San Francisco on March 25, "the mail was taken to the Ferry Street Post Office Station, where it was again worked. Five and one half days were required for 16 clerks and myself to rework this mail." A total of 153,217 pieces of mail were dispatched from San Francisco on March 30.

Mary H. Lawson, National Postal Museum