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Pacific Mail Steamship Company Mail Bag Brass Tag, SS Central America Treasure [159470]

Currency:USD Category:Artifacts / Shipwreck Artifacts Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:1,000.00 - 10,000.00 USD
Pacific Mail Steamship Company Mail Bag Brass Tag, SS Central America Treasure [159470]
SOLD
4,000.00USD+ (800.00) buyer's premium + applicable fees & taxes.
This item SOLD at 2023 Mar 04 @ 18:52UTC-8 : PST/AKDT
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Wonderful Pacific Mail Steamship Company, N.Y. brass tag probably used for a mail bag. Oblong, 5" x 2.5", with individual letters punched in one side. This choice artifact would have been attached to one of the many U.S. Mail bags headed to New York from California. The P.M.S.S. controlled the routes on the Pacific side and the U.S. Mail and Steamship Co. controlled the routes on the Atlantic side. The mail would have originated in San Francisco, placed on the S.S. Sonora, offloaded at Panama, onto the Panama RR and across to Aspinwall on the Atlantic side for loading onto the S.S. Central America for its doomed voyage to New York. It is probably the only such mail bag tag extant today. Much has been written about mail shipped during the California Gold Rush particularly during the 1850s at the peak when several authors have opined that up to 10,000 letters were shipped on every New York bound voyage, which were spaced two weeks apart, month after month. This piece was found in one of the debris fields. No mail survived the sinking of the S.S. Central America, though many documents did that were preserved in the purser's safe.

Provenance: SS Central America Collection