Repatriation from British India to WWI Germany onboard the S.S. Golconda
The cover of the Heimkehr mit der Golconda (Journey home on the Golconda) provides a sketch of the ship, and its contents explain in 18 pages the hardships experienced by the children on the ship.
Our colleague, Bob Gray, shares a tale with us:
Recently, I purchased a couple of covers at auction from a friend and mentor, the late Cliff Gregory. He was interested in the fate of the German and Austrian missionaries held as civil internees in WWI British India.
The major WWI belligerent nations put their enemy residents into internment camps or placed them under police supervision. The Allies were led by Britain, and the Central Powers by Germany. The two warring parties agreed to repatriate missionary families and other women and children rather than intern them. This was an Empire-wide exchange that included about 1000 people from British India. The missionaries had run schools, leper colonies, and other useful organizations, but they were considered pro-German and could influence their parishioners. The husbands of the others were interned at the prisoners of war camp at Ahmednagar, India.
Ships were being destroyed by German mines and torpedoes fired from U-boats, making any sea voyage dangerous. Of course, the Germans knew what ship would carry their citizens, but accidents at sea during the war occurred, nonetheless. For security reasons, Germans were forbidden to pass through the Suez Canal, and the repatriation ship, S.S. Golconda, would have to go around South Africa on its way to Britain. The ship was built in 1887 as a small freighter capable of holding only a few passengers.
It would go on to make two voyages. The first left India in November 1915 reaching Cape Town, South Africa on December 21, 1915. Passengers were not allowed off the ship but could post mail aboard the Golconda. Unfortunately, there are no recorded covers from the first voyage.
The second voyage left India in March 1916 and arrived on April 16 at Cape Town, leaving on the 18th. The covers present a bit of a mystery. An inbound cover shown as Figure 1 was found in a Grosvenor Auction. It is addressed simply to Mrs. Kuhl, passenger on the steamship Golconda, Gibraltar, from the Ahmednagar prisoners of war camp. The cover passed the camp’s censor on April 6, 1916, and the Bombay Censor. Gibraltar is crossed off the address, and the cover was stamped “Return to sender/ Admiralty instructions”. Where that handstamp was applied or why the mail was stopped is unknown.
Figure 1
Three outbound covers have key marks with the same dates. The cover shown here was sent postage-free by an internee aboard the S.S. Golconda. Free postage was granted to all prisoners of war under the terms of the Hague Convention. It is addressed to the prisoners of war camp at Ahmednagar, India, bearing an elliptical “CENSOR/CAPE TOWN/ 10 May 1916; CAPE TOWN/ PAQUETBOT/10 May 1916” marking and an undated “Passed Censor C.14”, a Cape Town censor handstamp. It was opened and resealed with a South African label in English and Afrikaans. There is an Ahmednagar delivery strike on June 5, 1916, at 6:30 AM.
But the S.S. Golconda arrived in Britain on the 10th of May, weeks after it left Cape Town.
It appears that the censors held the covers until the ship arrived safely. The elliptical mark likely indicated the release date by the censor to the post office, which then cancelled the covers with a “CAPE TOWN/PAQUETBOT 10 May 1916” mark.
The S.S. Golconda completed its two voyages to the UK. From there, the internees were transferred to a neutral ship bound for neutral Netherlands. On its return voyage to India, the Golconda hit a German mine and was sunk off the English coast with the loss of 19 crew.
