In June 1979 the Bermuda Post Office announced that it planned to sink 8 tons of obsolete postage stamps, raising questions from a number of Bermudians, both stamp collectors and taxpayers. A Mrs. Pennington wrote to Postmaster General Sidney Corbett from Liverpool: “Dear Sir, In reading of the disposal of 31 million out-of-date stamps it is grieving me at the thought of the death of them. Please could you dispatch them to me as I would be very pleased to have then for myself and my family.” Her letter so moved Mr. Corbett who replied “The destruction of of the stamps assured serious collectors and international dealers that a stamp issues on a limited basis will not be sold forever and ever. If you are going to offer a set of stamps for a year, you have to withdraw it after a year.”
So, on a blustery morning in July 1979, the Postmaster General set out on one of Bermuda’s tug-boats loaded with about 80 cases of stamps. Five miles off St. Davids’s Head, in 600 fathoms of water, Mr. Corbett has his assistants toss two of the 200-pound-cases overboard.
To their shock they just floated in the 12-foot-swells and were not about to sink. After unsuccessfully trying to smash them with a fireman’s axe and ramming them with the tug-boat, Mr. Corbett said “They are my stamps and I will go and get them.” Attached to about 40 feet of rope and in his underwear, the Postmaster General went overboard and managed to retrieve the cases. The next day he told me “I was being dragged around like a tuna on a line with the Niagara Falls coming at me.”
As expected the letter-to-the-editor writers in the daily newspaper had great fun with the story, especially one’s writing in ‘Bermudian’: “Dat bye Corbett makes me laff. Doan he know that vood boxes viff dry paper in em vont sink? He does get hisself into some sticky situations.” Still Mr. Corbett had the last laugh. After Reuters used the story for several days world-wide, he commented “It was a huge advertisement for the Post Office – we became well known for that we were doing right. We also proved one thing – that stamps don’t sink.” The stamps were eventually taken care if by the Bermuda Fire Department.
Starting work at the Bermuda Post Office when he was ’15 years, five months, and 9 says old’ at a salary of £12/10 shillings per month, Sidney Corbett certainly left his mark on Bermuda philately.
Rambling Notes of a Bermuda Philatelist published in December 2023 and is available at bookstores island-wide.
