Newfoundland 1919 'Hawker' Air Mail

A stamp for a flight that had not happened yet

Before the First World War, the London Daily Mail offered a prize of 10,000 pounds to the first aviator to fly across the Atlantic. The war put the race on hold. Within days of the armistice in November 1918 the offer was renewed, and by the spring of 1919 several British teams had shipped their aircraft to Newfoundland, chosen as the starting line because the prevailing winds favored a west-to-east crossing.

The first team to arrive was Harry Hawker, the Sopwith company's chief test pilot, and his navigator, Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Mackenzie Grieve of the Royal Navy. While they waited out weeks of rain, snow and fog on a rough field near Mount Pearl, about seven miles outside St. John's, Newfoundland decided to send mail with them. On April 11, 1919, Governor Sir C. Alexander Harris drove out to the field with several ministers to inspect the aircraft and entrusted the fliers with a specially prepared bag of mail. In a letter written that day to the King's private secretary, the governor noted that the Postmaster General had arranged "a special stamp for these letters."

That stamp was improvised from what was on hand. Postmaster General J.A. Robinson took 200 copies of the current 3-cent brown Caribou stamp and had them overprinted "FIRST TRANS-ATLANTIC AIR POST April, 1919" in six lines. A 1967 article by Gilbert Penny in BNA Topics, quoted by Canadian Stamp News, says the overprinting was done at the office of the Daily News in St. John's. Robinson then initialed the back of every stamp by hand, "J.A.R."

The underlying Caribou stamp is virtually worthless on its own. It is the overprint, and the story behind it, that gives the Hawker its value.

Where the 200 stamps went

The fate of the 200 overprints is unusually well documented, and the same breakdown appears in sources from 1967 to 2026. Eighteen were defective and destroyed. Ninety-five were used to frank letters carried on the flight. Eleven were given to officials as presentation copies. The remaining 76 were bought by the Postmaster General and sold to the public for $25 each, with the money going to Newfoundland's Marine Disasters Fund, which supported the widows and orphans of sailors.

That sale was controversial. Canadian Stamp News notes that while nobody suggested Robinson profited personally, some people questioned whether money should be raised by deliberately creating rare stamps.

The arithmetic sets the ceiling for collectors: 76 sold plus 11 presented means no more than 87 unused examples could ever have existed, and the number surviving today is believed to be lower. One presentation piece is especially famous. A 2023 sale description records the "framed Hawker," a single stamp on a page signed by all the contestants, as now being in the Royal collection in Britain.

Fourteen hours over the North Atlantic

The Sopwith Atlantic was a modified B.1 bomber with a 360-horsepower Rolls-Royce engine. Its upper fuselage was built as a detachable, upturned wooden boat for use if they came down at sea, and the undercarriage could be dropped after takeoff to save weight and drag; once it fell away, the plane gained about seven miles an hour.

On the afternoon of May 18, 1919, with the weather finally clearing and word that U.S. Navy flying boats had reached the Azores, Hawker and Grieve took off from Mount Pearl at 3:40 p.m. local time with the mail bag stowed aboard. A rival team, Frederick Raynham and C.W.F. Morgan in the Martinsyde Raymor, tried to follow about an hour later and crashed on takeoff.

Hours into the night the Atlantic's engine began to overheat, possibly from a blockage in the cooling system. Hawker dove repeatedly to try to clear it; on one dive the engine faltered and the plane dropped to within about 20 feet of the water before it caught again. With the radiator boiling dry, they turned toward the shipping lanes, found a small steamer after daybreak, circled it, and set the plane down in rough seas just ahead of it. The ship was the Danish freighter Mary, bound for Copenhagen, and her crew picked them up at 8:30 a.m. on May 19. The sea was too rough to salvage the aircraft.

Accounts of how far they got differ: about 1,100 miles in one auction description, 1,130 miles in another account, and approximately 1,200 of the 1,880 miles of open sea in a 1942 U.S. Naval Institute article. All put their time in the air at about 14 hours.

The Mary had no long-range radio. For six days the world assumed the men were dead, and King George V sent a telegram of condolence to Hawker's wife. On May 25 the Mary signaled the coast station at the Butt of Lewis in the Hebrides with flags: "Saved hands, Sopwith aeroplane." Hawker and Grieve were received by the King, who gave each of them the Air Force Cross, and the Daily Mail presented them with 5,000 pounds.

The mail bag that came back from the sea

The airplane did not sink. On May 23, 1919, the American freighter Lake Charlottesville, bound for Baltic ports with relief cargo, came upon it floating tail-up in mid-ocean with a white shirt tied on as a distress signal. Her master, Lieutenant Commander Albert C. Wilvers of the U.S. Naval Reserve Force, got it on deck on the third try. Lashed near the top was a brown mail bag marked for Newfoundland, holding letters addressed to British peers, the royal family and the King himself.

Wilvers, a stamp collector, dried the letters over the steam radiator in his cabin and turned the bag over to British naval authorities at Falmouth. The wreck was taken to London and shown for some days on the roof of Selfridges in Oxford Street. Surviving flown covers carry London postmarks of May 30, 1919 and official labels reading "Found Open and Officially Secured."

Sources disagree on how intact the mail came back. The 1942 Naval Institute article counts 86 water-soaked letters and says every one of the special stamps had come off its envelope, with only about 40 worth saving, three of which Wilvers kept for himself. A 2013 auction description says some stamps were washed off and replaced later. Stamp-trade sources consistently give 95 as the number of stamps used on the mail. A flown cover with its stamp, London marks and secured label is a separate, highly prized object from the unused stamp.

Single unused stamps change hands at auction every few years. A lightly hinged copy from the William H. Gross collection of British North America sold in New York in November 2009 for $19,000, and a very fine never-hinged copy from the Lionheart collection sold in London in 2015 for 16,000 pounds. Other copies have been offered at estimates in pounds only: one with part original gum at 16,000 to 18,000 pounds in London in 2017, and one with a 1978 expert certificate at 10,000 pounds in England in 2026. Flown covers have sold in the United States for $9,500 (2005), $12,500 (2013) and $8,500 (2023).

How to recognize a genuine Hawker

A genuine Hawker is a 3-cent brown Caribou bearing the six-line overprint "FIRST / TRANS- / ATLANTIC / AIR / POST / April, 1919" and, on the back, the manuscript initials "J.A.R." of Postmaster General Robinson. Auction descriptions note the initials are present "as always"; on a used copy they may be visible only by transmitted light. Better copies come with expert certificates, and many have been signed on the back by the experts who examined them over the decades.

Do not confuse it with the other Newfoundland flight provisional of spring 1919. For the Raynham and Morgan Martinsyde attempt, the 3-cent Caribou was given a handwritten "Aerial / Atlantic / Mail" inscription, also initialed "J.A.R."; of about 30 made, only 16 are believed to have been used as Martinsyde postage.

The Hawker is listed as Scott C1 and SG 142.

Legacy

Hawker and Grieve did not cross the Atlantic. The U.S. Navy's NC-4 reached Lisbon on May 27 and Plymouth on May 31, and on June 14-15, 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew nonstop from St. John's to Clifden, Ireland, and won the prize. But the Hawker flight carried the first bag of mail to set out on a nonstop attempt, and the bag survived the ditching. Writing in 1942, the Naval Institute's correspondent said experts generally considered the specially marked stamps "the rarest of all air mail stamps."

Harry Hawker went on to co-found Hawker Aircraft, the firm that later built a long line of British military aircraft. He was killed on July 12, 1921, when the plane he was to fly in the Aerial Derby crashed near Hendon Aerodrome.

The numbers

Issue date

April 1919 (flown covers postmarked April 12, 1919)

Quantity overprinted

200

Used on flight mail

95

Presentation copies

11

Sold for charity

76, at $25 each, for the Marine Disasters Fund

Damaged or destroyed

18

Maximum possible unused

87

Base stamp

3-cent brown Caribou, 1919 Trail of the Caribou issue

Overprint

Six lines, "FIRST / TRANS- / ATLANTIC / AIR / POST / April, 1919"

Authentication mark

Manuscript "J.A.R." on the back of every stamp

Timeline

1. Mar 10, 1919

   Hawker and Grieve sail from England for Newfoundland with the crated Sopwith Atlantic.

2. Mar 28, 1919

   They land at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland; the plane is rebuilt near Mount Pearl, outside St. John's.

3. Apr 1919

   Postmaster General J.A. Robinson has 200 of the 3-cent Caribou overprinted "FIRST TRANS-ATLANTIC AIR POST April, 1919" and initials each on the back.

4. Apr 11, 1919

   Governor Sir C. Alexander Harris inspects the plane and entrusts the fliers with a specially prepared bag of mail.

5. Apr 12, 1919

   Letters for the flight are postmarked at St. John's.

6. May 18, 1919

   The Atlantic takes off from Mount Pearl at 3:40 p.m. local time with the mail bag aboard.

7. May 19, 1919

   After about 14 hours in the air, Hawker ditches beside the Danish steamer Mary, whose crew rescues both men.

8. May 23, 1919

   The American freighter Lake Charlottesville finds the floating wreck and recovers it and the mail bag.

9. May 25, 1919

   The Mary signals the Butt of Lewis that the fliers are safe, after six days in which they were feared dead.

10. May 30, 1919

    The recovered letters receive London postmarks and official "Found Open and Officially Secured" labels.

11. Jul 12, 1921

    Harry Hawker is killed in a crash near Hendon Aerodrome.

12. Apr 1942

    The U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings publishes the story of the mail's salvage.

13. 1967

    Gilbert Penny's article "Newfoundland's Air Posts" in BNA Topics records the 200-stamp breakdown.

14. Nov 19, 2009

    A lightly hinged copy from the William H. Gross collection sells for $19,000 at auction in New York.

15. 2015

    A very fine never-hinged copy from the Lionheart collection sells for 16,000 pounds (about $24,846) at auction in London.

16. Sep 18, 2017

    A copy with part original gum is offered in London at an estimate of 16,000 to 18,000 pounds.

17. Jan 25, 2023

    A flown cover to Littleover, Derby, described as the only one known with an arrival postmark on the front, sells for $8,500.

18. Jan 2026

    An unused copy with a 1978 expert certificate is offered in England at an estimate of 10,000 pounds.

The world in 1919

• Jan 18, 1919

  The Paris Peace Conference opens.

• Apr 13, 1919

  British troops massacre Sikh civilians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, India.

• May 15, 1919

  The Winnipeg General Strike begins; it lasts six weeks.

• May 27, 1919

  The U.S. Navy's NC-4 flying boat reaches Lisbon, completing the first transatlantic flight, with stops.

• Jun 14, 1919

  Alcock and Brown take off from St. John's on the first nonstop transatlantic flight, landing in Ireland the next day.

• Jun 28, 1919

  The Treaty of Versailles is signed, formally ending World War I.

• Jul 2, 1919

  The British airship R34 begins the first transatlantic crossing by dirigible, and the first westbound flight.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Newfoundland 1919 'Hawker' Air Mail is number 66 of 100 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 82 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (51 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• King George V sent Hawker's wife a telegram of condolence before anyone knew he had been rescued; the ship that saved him had no long-range radio.
• The rescue was announced by signal flags: the steamer Mary spelled out "Saved hands, Sopwith aeroplane" to a coast station in the Hebrides.
• The captain who recovered the mail bag dried the letters over the steam radiator in his cabin and kept three of the stamps for his own collection.
• The wreck of the Sopwith Atlantic was put on show on the roof of Selfridges department store in London.
• Seventy-six of the stamps were sold for $25 each to help the widows and orphans of Newfoundland sailors.
• Hawker and Grieve never reached Ireland, yet the Daily Mail gave them 5,000 pounds and the King gave each the Air Force Cross.