Some Bristol Ship Letters

Here are a few Bristol Ship Letters (as a change from Ilminster !), starting with one from 1787.  The letter does not have any postal charge markings which may be because it was a consignee letter which would have been exempt from the ship letter charge.  It has a "SHIP-LRE / BRISTOL, 123" handstamp - a number of examples of this have a malformed or unclear final digit but this example is fairly clearly a "3".

Another ship letter with a a "SHIP-LRE / BRISTOL, 123" handstamp, from December 1787.  I cannot work out how the overall postal charge of 1/1d was calculated.

The example below from 1809 has a "Ship Letter / crown / BRISTOL" handstamp with contents relating to the sale of a house in Jamaica.

The letter below from 1813 has a red framed "BRISTOL / SHIP-LETTER" handstamp.  There were two rates of ship letter at this time, 4d for those that went in a sealed bag on a regular packet service and 1d for letters sent on a ship not chartered to provide a service by the post office.

The Ship Letter mark below from 1815 is a rarity - the "POST PAID WITHDRAWN SHIP LETTER" handstamp indicates prepayment was made at Bristol and then the letter was sent on a non-packet boat.

After the introduction of the Uniform Penny Post in January 1840, Ship Letters were charged a uniform rate of 8d including postage to their UK destination.  The letter below has a clear Agent's cachet for Collomb & Iselin in New York.

The letter below from February 1841 has two different cachets, a HARNDEN'S PACKAGE EXPRESS & FOREIGN LETTER OFFICE, BOSTON" cachet and an "AMERICA / L" cachet used by Cunard at Liverpool.  By 1841 Liverpool had taken over most transatlantic journeys from Bristol.

Here is an example of a letter from August 1841 that was marked to go via the Great Western from Bristol but actually went from Liverpool, bearing a red "SHIP LETTER / LIVERPOOL" datestamp.