| CLOSED FOR RENOVATION |
| The Naval Cover Museum will be unavailable until the new design is completed. This could take several months. My best guess is to check back at the end of Summer 2012. |
I apologize for the suddenness of the Museum's unavailability. I received notification from my hosting service that recently discovered security vulnerabilities in the underlying PHP version 4 code forced them to switch all their hosted websites to PHP 5. Unfortunately, the wiki software the Museum uses is not compatible with that version of PHP - thus we ended up dead in the water. The data is not lost - it is just inaccessible since the current programs cannot run anymore.
I had already intended to do a complete overhaul of the Museum this summer, but had hoped that nothing catastrophic would occur before then. No such luck.
- - - Paul Bunter
Naval Cover Museum
A Naval Cover is any envelope, postcard, or other postal medium that is mailed from or somehow related to a navy ship, location, or event. Beginning in 1908, post offices were established on board U.S. Navy ships and each ship had one or more postmarks to "cancel" the stamps used on the cover. The postmark, or cancellation, would usually have the ship's name and the date that the cover was cancelled.
Starting in the 1930's, covers with printed designs, called cachets, began appearing and established a large following. Many different cachets were designed and sent to various ships to be cancelled and mailed. Some cachets were designed for a specific ship while others were generic (perhaps for a holiday or commemorating an historical event) and sent to many different ships. World War II severely curtailed the creation and distribution of cachets and while covers with cachets are still created today, the phenomenon has never regained its pre-war level of enthusiasm.
Naval Covers present us with a snapshot of history; a window into a passing age. You hold history in your hand and wonder about the lives, the men and women, the events that were part of that era. Their image is preserved here. Come and visit them.