With the 22nd stamp in the Literary Arts series, the U.S. Post Service honors acclaimed writer Katherine Anne Porter.
Considered a master prose stylist. Porter won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1966 for “The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter”, which was published in 1965.
Award-winning stamp artist Michael J Deas based his painting of Porter on a 1936 photograph made by George Platt Lynes. By including a ship in the design, Deas links Porter’s portrait to the sea voyage that inspired her best-selling novel “Ship of Fools” and to her assessment of life, which she called “this brave voyage”.
In May 2006 the U.S. Postal service issued a 39-cent stamp to honor Katherine Anne Porter, author of the “Ships of Fools”. Porter had travelled aboard a North German Lloyd steamer to Bremerhaven from Mexico about the same time as she wrote her book in Aug.-Sept. 1931.
The fictitious ship in her novel was called VERA which is believed to be the NGL ship WERRA.
In 1965, Abbey Mann adopted Porter’s novel for the silver screen. It tells the overlapping stories of several passengers aboard a 36-day ocean voyage during the 1930s.
It was directed by Stanley Kramer and was to be Vivien Leigh’s last film.
The movie also starred Simone Signoret, José Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Oskar Werner, Michael Dunn, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, José Greco and Heinz Rühmann.
Werner, Dunn and Signoret were nominated for Oscars and the film won Academy Awards for the best art direction, set direction, and cinematography and was nominated for best costume design, best picture and best screenplay based on material from another medium.
The stamp design includes a tiny sketch of a two masted one funnel liner, comparing the blow-up of the stamp with a photo of the ship she could be the WERRA or one of her five sisters.
This ships were built for the Far East service but were used also a season to the North, Central and South America Service.
WERRA was the model for VERA in “The Ships of Fools” by Katherine Anne Porter a 1931 voyage from Tampico via islands and wayports to Bremerhaven.
The opening of the storey with the ship stuck in Tampico by a hurricane actually happened.
She was built as a cargo- passenger vessel under yard No 324 by A.G. Weser, Bremen for the Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen
21 September 1922 launched under the name WERRA.
Tonnage 9.476 gross, dim. 146.00 x 17.58m.
Powered by two 3-cyl. triple expansion steam engines, manufactured by the shipbuilder, 4.200 hp, speed 12.5 knots.
Passenger accommodation for 74 first and 90 second class passengers.
24 January 1923 made her maiden voyage from Bremen to the Far East, then she ran to the River Plata.
1933 In the service Bremen-Havana-Galveston.
12 August 1935 Sold to Italia Flotta Riunite SpA, Genoa and renamed CALABRIA.
Tonnage then given as 9.515 gross, 5.572 net.
Used in the service from Genoa to South America.
1936 Transferred to S.A. di Nav. Lloyd Triestino, Trieste, not renamed and registered at Genoa.
10 June 1940 when at Calcutta seized as a prize, and transferred under British flag, managed by British India S.N. Co.
21 June 1940 served with the Liner Division, joining the Ship Management Division in October 1940.
08 December 1940 the CALABRIA was torpedoed by U-103 in the North Atlantic in position 52 43N 18 07W as a straggler in convoy SL 56, en route from Calcutta and Freetown to the Clyde River with on board 129 crew, one gunner and 230 passengers (all crews of other ships) were lost. Also on board she had a cargo of 4.000 tons iron, 3.050 tons of tea and 1.870 tons of oil cake.
Source: Partly copied from Watercraft Philately Vol. 53 page 47. The British India Steam Navigation Company Ltd. by Laxon and Perry. Norddeutscher Lloyd Bremen by Edwin Drechsel.