ABSTRACT
One of the most curious ‘legacies’ of the Challenger Expedition is its depiction on postage stamps. Since the first stamp with a ship design appeared in 1852 (issued by British Guiana only twelve years after the arrival of Rowland Hill’s famous ‘Penny Black’), ships and boats of a bewildering variety have appeared on an enormous number of stamps from all over the world. Indeed, ‘ships’ is one of the largest stamp collecting themes and the Stanley Gibbons ships thematic catalogue published in 1989 (Bolton 1989) listed over 11,000 stamps depicting more than 2400 different named ships. As you might expect, some particularly famous vessels appear many times in the catalogue. For example, Darwin’s Beagle (14 times), Nelson’s Victory (22 times), Cook’s Discovery (21 times) and his Endeavour (36 times), Columbus’s Pinta (27 times) and Nina (31 times) and the Royal Yacht Britannia (57 times). But vying for top of the list are Columbus’s Santa Maria with 90 appearances, just pipped by Cook’s Resolution, which has appeared on no fewer than 92 stamps, including 7 from Norfolk Island alone. Compared with these all-time favourites, the Challengeds six appearances, including one since the 1989 catalogue was published, are not very impressive. Even more distressing for British oceanographer-philatelists, despite the importance of the expedition to marine science throughout the world, the ship has never appeared on a British stamp, nor even among the many research and exploratory vessels that have been depicted on stamps issued by the Falkland Islands Dependencies or its philatelic successor, the British Antarctic Territories.
