Antarctic ships — RRS Discovery

The Falkland Islands Dependencies issued the Queen Elizabeth II ship definitives on 1 February 1954, fifteen values each showing a vessel of Antarctic exploration and research beside the Queen's portrait. George Roberts designed the series and Waterlow & Sons recess-printed it, 28 × 41 mm, perforated 12½, on paper watermarked Crown over Script CA multiple (Scott 1L19–1L33, Stanley Gibbons G26–G40). One value belongs to the Scout theme: the 6d in light red-violet with the centre in black, showing a barque-rigged vessel among the ice with a penguin on the floe below and the inscription DISCOVERY 1925-27.

The ship is the RRS Discovery, built in Dundee for Scott's Antarctic expedition of 1901–04 and named on the stamp for her oceanographic commission of 1925–27. Her Scouting chapter came afterwards: in 1937 she was offered to the Sea Scouts as a floating headquarters, converted to a stationary training ship and berthed on the Victoria Embankment in London, where she served as headquarters, accommodation and training centre for the nautical branch of the Boy Scouts Association. That arrangement ran until 1954 — the very year of this issue — when the running costs became too much and the ship passed to the Admiralty as HMS Discovery. SOSOW accordingly heads the entry «H.M.S. Discovery, Sea Scout Training Ship», and notes that opinion differs on whether the stamp qualifies as a Scout issue at all, since nothing on the design refers to Scouting.

A note on identification: the SOSOW data row gives the face value as 3d with Scott 1L24 and Michel 24, but the stamp illustrated on that same page, and the ship named in its heading, is the 6d — Michel 26, Scott 1L26, Yvert 58, Stanley Gibbons G33. The 3d of the set shows Discovery II, a different vessel built in 1929 and with no Scouting connection. The 6d is the stamp catalogued here.