Mail – in today’s world of Amazon Prime, overnight shipping, email, messages and items sent almost instantly appear. However mail doesn’t travel that fast at all corners of the world, especially when mail in being sent from the Penguin Post office in Antarctica!
“Back in the Day”, especially in foreign ports, vessels passing by – stopping by with cargo, or passengers – would pick up the mail bound for their destinations and future ports. They were not mail ships, just regular merchant ships that picked up the mail when the destinations worked out.
While that happens rarely today – on the streets or at the airport you see designated US Postal service trucks or FEDEX airplanes. Some mail still uses vessels of convenience! The penguin post office relies on passing vessels – often the cruise ships to get mail from the post office and onward to their destinations.
On our last visit to Port Lockroy, home of the penguin post office, we were able to join in the world wide mail system and pick up some sacks of mail to be delivered to Stanley, in the Falkland Islands. The mail that gets send from the penguin post office is placed in a red royal mail box inside the Bransfield house on Goudier Island, where the post office is located. The postcards and letters are then hand canceled or “franked” as the British say down in Antarctica, by the post mistress and her team. They then bag it up into Royal mail sacks that they have ready when a ship has Stanley in their near future destination.
We picked up the mail from the post office in our dinghy and brought it back onboard Hans Hansson. Ten days later we would call in to Stanley.
Today as the post office opened we delivered our 5 sacks of mail to the Stanley Post office….. so the Penguin Post cards are now a few miles closer to their final destination.