Welcome to the official website for the Auction of Gerald Ellott Collection of Royal Navy Mail.
This website is aimed at enlightening you about the wonderful collection formed by Gerald Ellott of New Zealand. The website contains information about the collection, biography, press releases, the auction itself and the results. The auction will be held on the 16th of December 2011 in the Prestige Philately Showrooms – Melbourne Australia.
We hope you enjoy this production as a permanent memento of this excellent collection.
Gary Watson – Director and Auctioneer of Prestige Philately
Introduction for the Gerald Ellott Collection
“Royal Navy Concession Rate Letters 1795-1903”
the Large Gold Medal & Grand Prix winning exhibit
formed by Gerald Ellott MNZM RDP of Auckland
To my mind, military mail is a fantastic collecting field combining, as it does, aspects of both postal and social history with the realities of war and deprivation. To assemble an Empire-wide collection of 19th century military mail is a tall order. Few have done it well. However, when such a collection is limited to just items of naval mail, the degree of difficulty rises exponentially. What Gerald Ellott has achieved in assembling more than 300 naval entires and covers is quite astonishing.
Perhaps the auction sale that most closely approaches Gerald Ellott’s is that dedicated to another Gerald, Gerald Sattin, who is widely regarded as having put together one of the best ever collections of soldiers’ rates material. It is telling that, while Mr Sattin had about a dozen items from the 1790s, he had none dating from 1795, the year of introduction of the 1d soldiers’ rate. Gerald Ellott has two, one of them a soldier’s letter included for comparison, the other from a sailor. This duo are likely the earliest recorded such items in private hands.
An ingenious payment method was for the on-board sender to attach a penny coin to the outside of his letter. Gerald Ellott has two such items (the coins sadly but properly removed). Gerald Sattin had none.
The Crimean War was one of the most important conflicts of the 19th century. The Sattin collection included only 6 items; the Ellott collection boasts 21, many with the accompanying letters, and including a beautiful Line Engraved cover that is believed to be the only 5d rate item from the Baltic Fleet.
I counted mail from 37 colonies or foreign countries represented in the Sattin collection; there are no fewer than 58 different origins featuring in this sale, offering opportunity for collectors of postal history literally from Aden to Zululand.
Britain was involved in some form of war or skirmish, somewhere in the world, for virtually the whole of the 19th century. In a sense, Gerald Ellott’s collection is a record of that colourful past, when ships of the Royal Navy visited ports around the globe to fly the British flag, to demonstrate that Britain had the means to take on anybody (on land as well as at sea), to support her allies, and to further both the Mother Country’s colonial ambitions, and to implement her humanitarian policy against slavery.
The covers themselves offer insights into all of these aspects of the Navy’s calling. However, it is the letters within that contribute so much to the liveliness of this collection. An apprentice wrongly impressed into naval service appeals to his master to free him from the Navy’s hold on him; a sailor sends his mother a painting done by one of his shipmates, and the painting has survived with the letter!; a young midshipman sends home three evocative despatches while besieged at Ladysmith; a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar tells ribald jokes to his daughter!; a sailor provides a vivid and detailed account of an attack on Rangoon; another attests to the execution by beheading of scores of Chinese; a retired admiral heaps scorn on naval policy… Wonderful stuff!
The snapshots of the Crimean War are both varied and vivid. Cossacks opening fire on a British vessel flying a flag of truce; complaints about the conduct and pace of the war; an eye-witness account of a night-time naval bombardment (“Sevastopol was like a volcano: we have never seen such a continuous blaze”); an officer stationed near the Bosphorus speaks of going for walks, sometimes in Asia & sometimes in Europe; another asks for stamps to be sent to him.
It will surely surprise a great many people that this exceptional collection is being offered at auction in the Antipodes. The subject matter is, in essence, a British one. By far the majority of the items have been acquired from British collectors, dealers and auction houses. It might then seem almost perverse that a collection of Royal Navy mail is for sale anywhere but the Old Country.
However, those who know Gerald Ellott will be aware that he is not one to be trapped by convention or expectation. Gerald recognised that there were similarities between his style of collecting and that of his friend Mark Benvie. Gerald was impressed with how we presented and marketed Mark’s New Zealand Chalon period postal history earlier this year and decided that his collection would also benefit from exposure to what we call “The Prestige Difference”.
It’s no wonder Gerald Ellott calls this his “fun collection”. He certainly enjoyed both the hunt for elusive additions, and doing the often difficult research into the people and incidents behind the covers. And I certainly had fun investigating and describing his treasures. I hope you enjoy reading the catalogue as much as Gerald and I have enjoyed putting it together.
