Angmering Station’s post office was run by the station master who was also the local postmaster, and the railway played a major role in collection and delivery at the time. A post office was present in the village itself by 1911, according to the O.S. map for that year, so that may have replaced the station one.

These postmarks are recognised as fairly rare, as the population served by the station was quite small in those days.

These four cards from the early 1900s feature the Angmering Station postmark. They were all sent by a William Arthur Jenkins to just two addressees - his parents, and a Miss Edith M. Barnard.

All these locations were accessible by rail at the time which suggests that William may have visited them from Angmering, where he worked as a grocer's assistant, subsequently posting the cards at the station.

The backs of the cards show us more. The angled placement of the stamps on two of them was used as a code for expressing affection from the sender - in this case to his parents, and to Edith. It is no surprise that William eventually married her in 1911.

One of the texts to his parents comments that "The Baltic fleet passed here yesterday afternoon. What do you think of the North Sea Outrage." This refers to an incident three days earlier in the North Sea when the Russian Baltic fleet, on its way to a battle with the Japanese fleet on the other side of the world, had opened fire on the Hull fishing fleet in the mistaken idea that these were Japanese torpedo boats! One boat was sunk, killing two men and wounding several others. The ensuing public outcry resulted in the dispatch of our own navy in pursuit of the Russians, but a state of war was narrowly averted. The Russians eventually suffered a crushing defeat by the Japanese at the battle of Tsushima, some seven months later.

Many postcards were issued depicting what came to be called the Dogger Bank Incident. The one featured here is an artist's impression of the action.

Here are two versions of the same scene, showing the damage to the trawlers in Hull.

One of the newspaper illustrations, sold as a postcard, shows an extra shot hole which was presumably added to enhance the effect and add to the impact. An early example of fake news, perhaps?

Many accounts of the Russian fleet story have been published. One of these was The Fleet that had to Die, by Richard Hough from 2000.

Back