The Turks and Caicos Islands, a British crown colony in the West Indies, has issued a set of nine stamps highlighting "Underwater Exploration," with particular emphasis on wrecks, discoveries and recoveries.
Among the illustrations are Jim Jarrat in 1935 exploring the 1915 wreck of the Lusitania; Jacques Cousteau and his team discovering his first wreck in 1952; the discovery of the oldest known shipwreck, dating back 3,300 years; the raising of a Swedish man-of-war sunk in 1628; Mel Fisher discovering the Spanish galleon Atocha, with its vast gold treasure; and the discovery in 1984 by Larry Clifford of the first pirate ship to be found with its treasure intact.The stamps also show the use of a robot to find the Nazi dreadnought Bismarck; the discovery of the Land Tortoise, scuttled during the French and Indian War in 1758; and the 1994 discovery by a deep-diving nuclear submarine of a Roman wreck.
The stamps of the Turks and Caicos are available at your local dealer.
- Syd Kronish