SURPRISE PG 63

Ship Name and Designation History

This section lists the names and designations that the ship had during its lifetime. The list is in chronological order.

British Flower Class Corvette/Temptress Class Patrol Gunboat Laid down October 23 1939 for the French Navy but taken over by Great Britain with the fall of France Launched June 5 1940 HMS HELIOTROPE K-03 (British Naval Service) Commissioned September 12 1940 USS SURPRISE PG-63 Transferred to U.S. Navy March 24 1942 renamed and commissioned Decommissioned August 20 1945 Returned to the Royal Navy August 26 1945 Struck from Naval Register September 17 1945 HELIOLOCK (British Merchant Service) Served through 1946 ZIANG TEH (Taiwanese Registry) Sold to Taiwan 1947 and renamed LIN I (Chinese Registry) Fell into the hands of the Communist Chinese and renamed Broken up 1950

Naval Covers

This section lists active links to the pages displaying covers associated with the ship. There should be a separate set of pages for each name of the ship (for example, Bushnell AG-32 / Sumner AGS-5 are different names for the same ship so there should be one set of pages for Bushnell and one set for Sumner). Covers should be presented in chronological order (or as best as can be determined).

Since a ship may have many covers, they may be split among many pages so it doesn't take forever for the pages to load. Each page link should be accompanied by a date range for covers on that page.

1. USS Surprise PG-63 Covers Page 1     (1943-44)

 

Postmarks

This section lists examples of the postmarks used by the ship. There should be a separate set of postmarks for each name and/or commissioning period. Within each set, the postmarks should be listed in order of their classification type. If more than one postmark has the same classification, then they should be further sorted by date of earliest known usage.

A postmark should not be included unless accompanied by a close-up image and/or an image of a cover showing that postmark. Date ranges MUST be based ONLY ON COVERS IN THE MUSEUM and are expected to change as more covers are added.
 
>>> If you have a better example for any of the postmarks, please feel free to replace the existing example.

 

Postmark Type --- Killer Bar Text	Postmark Date	Thumbnail Link To Postmark Image	Thumbnail Link To Cover Image

 

Locy Type 3z

1944-03-21

N/A

Official Business. Ship had no postal facilities, postmarked from another ship or shore facility.

 

Locy Type 2z*

1944-04-27

The ship had no postal facilities, so this cover was posted either on another ship or ashore.

 

Other Information

NAMESAKE - An unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing.

There have been five ships of the US Navy that have borne the name SURPRISE - Continental Ship Surprise (1777 Sloop), USS Surprise (1814 Brig), USS Surprise (1815 Ketch),
USS Surprise PG-63 and USS Surprise PG-97.

 

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If you have images or information to add to this page, then either contact the Curator or edit this page yourself and add it. See Editing Ship Pages for detailed information on editing this page.

 

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