RMS Titanic - postal facing slip, Os Woody

RMS Titanic - a postal facing slip intended for New York, recovered from the body of Titanic postal clerk Oscar Scott Woody by the crew of the cable ship Mackay-Bennett on 22 April 1912. It is a single page slip, buff, measuring 5 x 3 inches, denoting mail destination Sealed Distributions Customs, Second Div. N.Y.P.O. 8 From SEAPOST LETTERS, with the 8 handwritten in blue wax pencil. Stamped O. S. Woody and Titanic. Woody has bumped the slip with Titanic's unique transatlantic postal cancellation which reads, TRANSATLANTIC POST OFFICE 7, AP 10 [19]12. The 7 refers to the number assigned to Titanic's on-board post office within the transatlantic postal system. The number was retired by the service after Titanic was lost. Titanic was transporting over 3000 sacks of mail containing an estimated 7 million letters. As part of the sorting process each of Titanic's five postal clerks, including Woody, would place a facing slip on a bundle of sacks to denote their intended destination. It is believed that there were more than 30 different pre-marked destinations contained on Titanic's facing slips however, only a few of those have been documented since only examples found on Woody's body have been recovered. Perhaps Woody had taken them for safeguarding believing that mail sorting on the ship would ultimately be resumed. While this example appears to be the eighth facing slip Woody had designated as intended for the New York Post Office, we are not aware of any other specific examples available for public sale and know of only one other such example extant. Woody's No. 9 N.Y.P.O. facing slip can be seen on the Smithsonian Institution's online postal museum. The facing slip seen here, which contains the handwritten 8, thus appears to be unique. All five postal clerks died in the disaster. Only the bodies of Woody and fellow American postal clerk John Starr March were recovered. According to the log book of the CS Mackay-Bennett, the entry for 22 April 1912 indicates that 27 bodies were recovered that day, all of which had lifebelts and floated very high in the water. While these facts obviously contributed to the survival of this facing slip, there is nevertheless a water stain at the top of the slip evidencing its submersion in the North Atlantic. Woody (body no. 167) was buried at sea on 24 April. This facing slip was donated to the Freemasons branch of which Woody had been a member. It was thereafter sold to raise funds. Henry Aldridge and Son sold Woody's postal keys for over £100, 000 in 2007, still a record sum for a set of keys. These are now part of the Smithsonian collection. This facing slip was on Titanic, in the North Atlantic and on the recovery ship Mackay-Bennett and contains an original ink stamp of Titanic's special on-board postmark representing one of the clearest known strikes of Titanic's sea post No. 7, as well as evidence of its submersion in the water

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