Here’s a shortened extract from Stranded in the Six-Day War about how the seafarers on trapped ships in the Suez Canal created their own stamps – miniature works of art.

Soon after their arrival in the Bitter Lake, some seafarers began to create their own GBLA stamps to stick on their letters – tiny, hand-crafted works of art made using a variety of materials found on board. Home-made stamp making required remarkable ingenuity. It continued throughout the time the ships were in the Suez Canal. Different methods were used, all involving painstaking work. Some stamps were drawn by hand, and printed using inks, crayons or even coffee grounds for colour. Other stamps were produced from potato cuts or carved from linoleum, and then coloured with inks.

Entire envelopes were also decorated (George Wharton)

Stamp artists
The Poles were the masters of stamp creation. Captain Brian McManus commented that the Boleslaw Bierut’s Third Engineer, Kassimir, was a talented artist and it took him more than two months to make a set of stamps. He produced the 14 Ships Issue in February 1968 – 14 different stamps showing each of the ships: ‘Hulls, accommodation, funnels, mast, derricks and cranes and all distinguishing features are shown in their correct proportion’. They were all accurately coloured and showed the national flag. It was an extraordinary achievement to do all this at the scale of a postage stamp.

Themes
Each series of stamps had a theme; sport was a popular subject. The ships took it in turns to host sailing regattas and produced stamps to commemorate the event.

Agalampus regatta stamp (top) and stamps with the GBLA symbol (left) – an anchor and figure 14 for the number of ships (John McPherson)

Stamp showing table tennis and to record the GBLA Olympics in September 1968 (Steve Elford)

The stamp designers frequently created stamps that were relevant to life in the Suez Canal. For the first Christmas on the Bitter Lake, Captain Kudrna printed stamps with a Christmas-tree motif. There was clearly a big demand at this time of year. The stamp creators also celebrated anniversaries, marking the passage of time stranded in the Bitter Lake. Looking back, Captain Bryan Hill remarked, ‘Somehow there never seemed to be a dearth of quite logical occasions to celebrate and therefore a stamp issue to mark the event.’

Original unused strips of stamps kept by Captain Bryan Hill. These marked the first anniversary in the Great Bitter Lake (June Nelson)

World events in stamps
Some stamps recorded life in people’s home countries and the wider world. In July 1969, a Polish electrician designed a GBLA stamp to mark the landing of the first human being on the Moon. Through their art, the seafarers maintained their connection with their homelands and the world outside.

‘Mailed on Board’
Since the seafarers used different currencies, paying for stamps was complicated. After a while, it was agreed that joining the GBLA entitled a member to a regular supply of stamps. In addition to the postage stamps, the ships were given identical rubber ‘Mailed on Board’ stamps, displaying an anchor with a ‘14’ on it, double stripes to represent the Suez Canal, the GBLA initials and the name of the ship.

The ‘mailed on board’ stamp (Steve Elford)

Returning crew members often took post back to their country, where the shipping company added national stamps and forwarded the letters. The rest of the time, once a letter had a GBLA stamp on it and had been franked ‘Mailed on Board’, it was cancelled by the vessel’s post office and sent to an Egyptian post office where Egyptian stamps were added.

According to Captain McManus and Captain Hill, mail was sometimes franked by the Egyptian postal authority with only a GBLA stamp on it. Captain Hill believed this helped to prove the ‘independent sovereignty of the GBLA’ – as if the 14 ships formed a separate little nation in their own right.

Stamp commemorating the departure of the ships from the Suez Canal in 1975. The caption says ‘Homecoming of the Münsterland after eight years in the Great Bitter Lake’. (Steve Elford)

Farewell stamps (Wilhelm Schifferdecker)