Perim Island

Exchanging Postcards

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It is a fact that in the early 1900s the Dutch had a Vice-Consul on Perim instead of at Aden. This was for the simple reason that most Dutch vessels coaled at Perim rather than at Aden. This short article strongly suggests that for a period his name was V Borg. A number of picture postcards of Perim for at least the period 1901-02 have a vignette of the sender in the top left-hand corner. Other postcards are stamped V Borg. Fortunately the writer of this piece has one card with the vignette signed Borg  (see illustration 1), whilst another to the same address is stamped V Borg on the reverse (see illustration 2). Another common denominator is that neither card has a message. All the indications are that Mr Borg was exchanging postcards, a very popular hobby at the time. Postcard 3 is to Holland and carries a short message on the front, as allowed by postal regulations. It is probable that the sender of the 1901 card to Surabaya ,written in Dutch was, also sent by Borg.

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Now for a comment of Postal History interest. The rate for postcards from British India (therefore including Perim) was 1 Anna. But both the cards to the UK have only a ½ Anna stamp, neither card attracting Postage Due. There was a ½ Anna rate and this was for Printed Papers up to 2 ounces in weight (primarily intended for newspapers). Card 1 has ‘Carte Postale’ crossed out and ‘Printed matter’ inserted by hand. The earlier card, card 2,  purely has all the printed postcard headings crossed out, But Card 3, the one to Holland, was sent at the 1 Anna rate, presumably because by adding a message it no longer counted as ‘Printed matter’.

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One final point. All three cards illustrated here, although similar in layout on the picture side are from three different printings (cards 1 and 3 only differing in the colour of the reverse of the cards.) Our Mr Borg must a have been a busy exchanger!