The 10 cents parcels post stamp illustrated, which was issued by the United States postal authorities in 1912, shows the North German Lloyd liner Kronprinz Wilhelm arriving in New York harbour on February 23, 1902. This stamp has been the subject of a great deal of speculation and guesswork, as the Vignette apparently shows the liner leaving New York, with a mail tender alongside. As most readers of "Sea Breezes" will doubtless know, mail tenders only meet incoming vessels at New York, outgoing mails being put aboard the vessel before she leaves her berth.
Suggestions for the error in the stamp design are that it was copied from a photograph printed from a reversed negative, or that in the original photograph the landscape on the right was Staten Island and that the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing thought they would improve the picture by substituting Manhattan's skyscrapers for the Staten Island buildings in order to make the view resemble New York City. The latter suggestion is quite near the mark. The skyscrapers ,were substituted, but not for Staten Island.
In the original photograph from which the design was taken (a copy of which I have in my possession) the right-hand side of the picture was occupied by harbour craft and a German cruiser. It was the presence of the latter which caused the picture to be altered for the purposes of the stamp design, since a foreign warship would naturally be out of place on a stamp purporting to show U.S. parcel post operations In New York harbour. Prince Henry of Prussia was aboard the German liner to pay a visit to the U.S.A.when the photograph was taken, and this fact explains the presence of the German cruiser, which was his escort vessel.
The Kronprinz Wilhelm, 14,908 gross tons, was built by the Vulcan Yard at Stettin and was launched on March 30, 19Q1. She had accommodation for 367 first-class and 340 second-class passengers and 1,054 emigrants, with a crew of 527, and her average speed was 23 knots. She was on the Bremen¬Southampton-Cherbourg-New York service and took seven days from Bremen to New York, the ocean passage taking five-and-a-half days.
On the eve of the First World War, before the American neutrality arrangements could function properly, she slipped from the U.S. port and made for a rendezvous in the West Indies with the German cruiser Karlsruhe. Here she took from the warship a number of guns and gunnery ratings (though not many could be spared) and became a commerce raider. Thus weakly armed, she operated mainly against unarmed merchantmen, sinking 15 (11 steamers and four sailing vessels), all without loss of life.
After being eight months at sea, refuelling and revictualling from her victims and constantly on the run from British warships, machinery trouble forced the Kronprinz Wilhelm to take refuge in Newport News, Va., where she was interned by the United States. When that country entered the war in 1917 the Americans commissioned her as a cruiser-transport under the name Von Stuben. By the end of the war she was worn out and she was scrapped in 1923.
SG P428