- £100.00
‘S S OREGON’ 1886. In the early hours of March 14 1886, the steam ship ‘Oregon’, a 7500 ton liner of the Cunard Line, was in a collision with the American schooner Charles H. Morse twenty six miles south east of Fire Island, New York Bay. She had sailed from Liverpool early that month with six hundred and forty one passengers and a crew of two hundred and fifty five, her destination being New York. The watertight doors of the ‘Oregon’ were blocked with coal dust and would not close and the vessel soon flooded and sank. Fortunately the North German Lloyd liner ‘Fulda’ arrived in time to save all on board and also a portion of the 598 bags of mail she was carrying. Other mailbags were washed up along the coast between Portland and Cape Hatteras. In total, 464 mailbags were recovered. The Charles H Morse is believed to have sunk with all hands. Salvaged mail received either an explanatory label or in some cases, manuscript explanations. This cover has a manuscript ‘Presumed from the sunken Oregon’. It must have been found very shortly after the incident as it arrived in Chicago on March 16th.
