Page 81 - The Postal Agencies in Eastern Arabia

Office of its own and used the Dubai P.O.), bear unusual cancella­
tions on the stamps. The ‘K’ in Types 3 and 4 indicate an office under
the control of Karachi which was responsible for all the Agency Post
Offices in the Gulf.

There are three known covers on which the stamps bear the
POSTAL CENSOR DEPTT KARACHI datestamp (May 6th and
December 21st, 1940); and January 30th, 1941). Ail show evidence
of Dubai origin, all-are addressed to Bombay and all bear the C 18
triangular Censor mark indicating that they were censored only on
arrival in Bombay. That which is illustrated has no Delivery back-
stamp; but the other two bear back-stamps four or six days after the
Karachi datestamp.

The most likely explanation would seem to be that these were
loose letters posted on board the BISN steamer at Dubai - as had been
the pre-war custom — and handed to the Post Office on arrival at
Karachi. The Postal Censor Deptt. was, no doubt, in very close touch
with the Post Office and the datestamp fulfilled the function of
cancelling the stamps on a Paquebot letter.
It had long been assumed that the Experimental P.O. K-46
cancellation was used in Dubai, the grounds for this being that most
of the covers also bore indication of Dubai origin. It was also suggested,
on the grounds that the only two known covers bearing this cancella-

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