Colombian SCADTA airmail stamps on Dutch mail

by Hans Kremer

Note: Just to be clear, I do not own any of the

illustrations shown in this article. Nearly all of
them were supplied by Bernd Woehlbrandt.

In the CherryStone auction op March 2007 I

noticed a cover, very similar, but of lesser
quality, to the one shown here. It was described
as: “Colombia Air Post ........... handstamped
“H” in violet......”.

What struck me about that cover was that it was

offered as a Dutch cover, but that it had not only
Dutch stamps on it, but also stamps from
Colombia, which also were cancelled in the
Netherlands (just like the cover shown here). How
could that be?

I had seen these “H” overprinted stamps before

and knew that they were issued by a company
named “SCADTA” but I never had paid much
attention to these. This time however, I decided to
do some research on the Internet to see what I
could find out about SCADTA. Going to
www.google.com and typing in SCADTA
resulted in about 22,000 hits, way too many of
course to check them all out. Next I narrowed the
search to SCADTA combined with Holland,
which brought it down to roughly a thousand
hits. Still too many. Next search entered was
SCADTA H Holland, which still resulted in 680
hits. I decided that this would be a manageable
number, especially taking into account that the
first 100 hits probably would include everything I
needed to know, or at least would put me on the
right track. After checking out various sites I felt
that the following would do to describe what
SCADTA was about:
http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca.

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 2

“SCADTA (1919 - 1940)
The airline traces its history back to December 5,
1919, in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia.
Germans Werner Kämerer, Stuart Hosie, Alberto
Tietjen, and Colombians Ernesto Cortissoz (the first
President of the Airline), Rafael Palacio, Cristóbal
Restrepo, Jacobo Correa, and Aristides Noguera
founded the Colombo-German Company called
Sociedad Colombo-Alemana De Transportes Aéreos,
or SCADTA for short. The company accomplished
its first flight between Barranquilla and the nearby
town of Puerto Colombia aboard a Junkers F13
wherein 57 pieces of mail were transported; the
flight was piloted by German Helmuth Von Krohn.
This and another aircraft of the same type were
completely mechanically constructed monoplanes,
the engines of which had to be modified in order to be able to efficiently operate in the climatic conditions of the
country; there were nine aircraft in the fleet with a total range of 850 km (525 Mi) and could carry up to four
passengers and two crewmen. Due to the topographic characteristics of the country, and the lack of airports at the
time, two floats were adapted to the Junkers aircraft in order for them to accomplish water landings on the rivers of
different towns. Using these floats Helmuth Von Krohn was able to perform the first inland flight over Colombia
on October 20, 1920, following the course of the Magdalena River; the flight took eight hours and had to make four
emergency landings on the water.

Soon after the vision of the

founding group had become a
reality, German scientist and
philanthropist Peter von Bauer
became interested in the airline and
contributed general knowledge,
capital, and a tenth aircraft for the
company as well as obtaining
concessions from the Colombian
government to operate the
country's airmail transportation
division using the airline. This
new contract allowed SCADTA to
thrive in a new frontier of aviation.
By the mid 1920s, SCADTA,
having overcome many obstacles,
inaugurated its first international
routes that initially covered
destinations in Venezuela and the
United States. Regretfully, in
1924, the aircraft that both Ernesto
SCADTAʼs Junkers F13 “Atlantico” on the Magdalena River Cortissoz and Helmuth Von Krohn
were piloting crashed into an area
currently known as Bocas de Ceniza, in Barranquilla, causing their deaths. Despite this tragedy the airline continued
to thrive under the guidance of German Peter von Bauer until the early 1940s where circumstances related to the
outbreak of World War II forced him to sell his shares in the airline to the U.S. owned Pan American World
Airways.”

This site however, did not go into any detail about the airmail service SCADTA provided. For that we can go to:
http://www.aerogramme.com/exhibits/scadtaps/ExhPg01.htm:

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 3

“SCADTA Postal Stationery
Columbia’s early domestic airmail service was provided by private organizations. The Sociedad Colombo-Alemana
de Transportes Aéreos, or “SCADTA”, began operations on October 19, 1920 and acquired an exclusive airmail
contract by the end of the year. This exclusive contract lasted just over 11 years, running out on January 1, 1932.

Under the contract, all mail carried by air required franking by airmail stamps, printed and sold by SCADTA.
SCADTA was permitted to own and operate its own post offices throughout Colombia. The SCADTA franking
paid only the air part of the service within Colombia. Mail originating in Colombia also required franking with
Colombian National Government postage appropriate to the particular service. Mail originating elsewhere required
proper postage to pay transit to Colombia and SCADTA franking for air service within Colombia.”

By now I had a pretty good idea what SCADTA and the overprinted stamps were about, but of course once you are
getting the basics down you’ll try to find out more. Looking at a map of Colombia you’ll notice that the port of
entry for mail coming from Europe would be Barranquilla in the Caribbean Sea. Since Colombia is a very rugged
country, travel by surface would be very time consuming so SCADTA’s airmail service greatly reduced travel time,
in some cases from a week (!) to a couple of hours!

Having ‘exhausted’ my Google SCADTA searches it occurred to me that there might be an organization of stamp
collectors who have Colombia as their main interest. Back to Google and so I came to www.copaphil.org, where it
reads: “.....The purpose of COPAPHIL is to promote the philately of Colombia and Panama”.

I contacted COPAPHIL and Thomas (Tom) Myers, secretary and Copacarta editor, in particular has been very
helpful. He pointed me to other literature available, such as the Sanabria catalogue (The World Airmail Catalogue),
a copy of which of the 1966 version I found in the Western Philatelic Library (www.fwpl.org) in Sunnyvale,
California, as well to the Michel stamp catalog, which I found less useful.

The overprints were for easier identification and control purposes. The complete list is as follows: A = Germany,
Austria, and Czechoslovakia, A-U= Argentina-Uruquay, B=Belgium, Bo=Bolivia, Br=Brazil, C=Cuba,
Ca=Canada, Ch=Chile,CR=Costa Rica, D=Denmark, E=Spain, EU=United States, F=France, G.B.=Great Britain,
H=Netherlands or Netherlands Antilles, I=Italy, P=Panama and Canal Zone, Pe=Peru, S=Switzerland and
Liechtenstein, Su=Sweden, and V=Venezuela.

I noticed that “H” was not only used in the Netherlands but for the Netherlands Antilles as well, but once one
realizes that Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao are just of the coast of Venezuela and thus not far from Colombia there
most likely was a fair amount of correspondence between at least Curaçao and Colombia. As you will read later,
the Netherlands Antilles had a prominent role during SCADTA’s earlier days

By now I thought I had pretty much exhausted the subject until I got another idea. With the German background of
these Scadta stamps maybe more could be found out about all of this in Germany. So back to Google, this time
typing in ‘SCADTA Deutschland” to see what came up, and that’s how I got to www.scadta.de, a beautiful and
very extensive Website devoted to SCADTA in all its aspects. It is set up and maintained by Bernd Woehlbrandt.
This site is in German, which brings with it some translation problems, but after going thru the Website a couple of
times things fall into place and one then realizes how extensive the Scadta subject is. Bernd shows all kinds of
material that belongs in an Scadta collection. For this article (which is about the ‘Dutch’ Scadta stamps only) there
is information I did not find anywhere else. I contacted Bernd (what a wonderful tool email is!) and will share what
I learned from him.

Bernd has a nice series of spreadsheets showing on which Colombian stamps the various overprints (listed by
country) can be found.

What I found for the “H overprint is this:

Year of Issue:
1921 (Perf: 11 1/2) (Eleven Denominations (5 c thru 5 P)) Hand cancelled H in violet and black
1923 (Perf 14) (Twelve denominations (5 c thru 20 R)) Hand cancelled H in violet and black (red only on
the 30 c and 5 P denominations)
1923 (Perf 14) (Twelve denominations (5 c thru 20 R)) Machine cancelled H in black.
Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 4
Also listed are the number of overprinted stamps on the 1923 issue. For the “H” stamps the total is 13,575 stamps,
of which 4,750 were of the 30 cent (the most common) denomination. Spread out over all countries the total
number of overprinted stamps on the 1923 issue comes to 731,500, with about 116,000 of these with the EU
(United States) initials.

L to R: Handcanceled H on 1921 issue, 1923 issue, and machine canceled H on 1923 issue

In F.J van Beveren’s

publication I found the
following 1929 PTT
announcement. It gives
instructions on how to
use these stamps, where
to buy them, as well as
the airmail surcharges
for mail to destinations
in Colombia and
Ecuador.

The announcement
points out that franking
to pay for the airmail
surcharge in Colombia
and Ecuador is still to
be made with the
SCADTA-airmail
stamps, which can be
obtained at the K.L.M.
Detail of 1929 P.T.T announcement. agents’ offices located at
Hofweg 9, ‘s
Gravenhage; Leidsche
Plein, Amsterdam and Coolsingel 115, Rotterdam. The airmail surcharge for letters to all destinations in Colombia
was 30 cents per 20 grams; for postcards it would be 15 cents, printed matter 15 cents per 20 grams, and an
additional 20 cent for registered mail.

Stamps with the overprint ‘H’ were sold at the K.L.M. offices in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague, as well
at the Colombian Consulates in the Netherlands and the Dutch West Indies. Since these over printed stamps were
primarily being sold at Colombian Consulates overseas, they are often referred to as “Consular Stamps’.

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 5

Stickers to promote the use
of SCADTA stamps

It should be pointed out that not only the overprinted Scadta stamps could be used, but also the not overprinted
ones.

When the Scadta service first started the sender had to use two envelopes to send a letter using the Colombian
airmail service On the outer envelope one had to write “To SCADTA, Barranquilla, Colombia” and one had to use
the regular stamps of one’s country for this (in our case that would have been Dutch stamps)

For the enclosed envelope, with its Colombian address, one had to use the consular (Scadta)-stamps (30
Centavos for each 20 grams and so on). When the envelop arrived at Barranquilla Scadta opened the outer envelope
and then took out the inner envelope. Then Scadta personnel had to put the regular domestic rate Colombian
stamps on this cover at their own expense! (the contract with the Colombian government said: Scadta-stamps had
to be combined with regular stamps!). This system is referred to as the "Two-Cover-System".

The next page shows an example of such an enclosed (rare) Dutch cover.

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 6

 Cover which was enclosed in another cover. Outside cover sent from Amsterdam to
Barranquilla , then opened and cover was then sent 17-XII-1925 to its final
destination (by air) after the 4 cent Colombian stamp (paying for the domesticrate) was
added.

After a short time Scadta made arrangements with some countries to simplify the system. Some dates are :
Switzerland (1923-07-15), Germany (1923-09-01), USA (1925-06-01), and the Netherlands (1926-06-28). So the
Dutch could from then on use only one cover using Dutch stamps for the sea journey to Barranquilla and the
Scadta-Consular-Stamps for the airmail part within Colombia. This is called the ‘One-Cover-System’.

The last way to simplify these system was: The Dutch could use Dutch stamps only, but when that happened is
not known to me The first counties to use the simple system were Germany: 1926-12-06, and USA 1931-06-15.

After having described the basic Scadta information the reader might want to enjoy some other Scadta covers plus
the history behind them.

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 7

Dutch auctioneer Wiggers De Vries in the auction catalog of March 2008 shows the following cover:

The description was as follows:

“1930 SCADTA cover , Sent 8 september 1930 to Bolivia. Arrival 30 october 1930. Two Bolivian
stamps and a 12 1/.2 cent Dutch stamp. Cancelled Eindhoven N.V.Philips and Servicio De Transportes
Aereos Barranquilla”

The reference to Bolivia threw me off at first. A closer look at the 30 cent stamp reads along the top:
“Servicio Bolivariano”, which indeed looks like we are dealing with a Bolivian stamp. However, this is
not the case. In the late 1920s SCADTA began using the name “Servicio Bolivariano de Transportes
Aéreos” in its marketing, referring to the great liberator of South America Simón Bolívar. So, this is a
Colombian stamp, as is the R overprinted stamp (the R in this case stands for Registrado (registered
mail); it is not referring to a country ‘R’) .

If we take a closer look at this cover we’ll notice that there are no “H” stamps on it, but it is still (correctly) referred
to as a Scadta cover. The two Colombian stamps, the (blue) 30 centavos, and (red) 20 centavos stamp
(overprinted with an R), are indeed Scadta stamps. In 1929 the letter overprinted stamps had been replaced by these
types of stamps.

I n the Scott catalog for Colombia we’ll find these stamps described as:
“For International Airmail 1929, June 1
This issue was sold abroad for use on correspondence to be flown from coastal to interior points of Colombia.
Cancellations are those of the country of origin rather than Colombia.”

The ‘R’ overprinted stamp paid for the extra 20 centavos registration fee. Since only one 30 centavos stamp was
attached the ‘Philips’ letter must have weighted less than 20 grams. 12 1/2 cent was the regular surface mail rate
from the Netherlands to foreign destinations during the 1930s.

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 8

Now let’s have a look at a very rare registered Curaçao SCADTA cover, sent during October 1930 from
Willemstad (Curaçao) to Bogota, Colombia.

Cover sent September 30, 1930 from Curaçao to Bogota, Colombia. Franked with a 30 cent Scadta stamp,
a registered mail Scadta stamp and 85 cents total in Netherlands Antilles stamps.
Aruba/Curaçao and SCADTA
From: http://www.arubaaviation.com/history.html

“The coming of SCADTA

In 1923 SCADTA, which was later renamed Avianca, started planning for some routes to the north, namely the
U.S, but it realized that fuel and rest stops needed to be made in the Caribbean.
Preparations started in Curaçao where they planned to operate from. Even some small islands were bought by their
representative on that island. The idea was to land and dock at the lagoon behind Willemstad, named Schottegat.
Because of several problems in Colombia this was delayed. It was in 1924 when SCADTA and Condor signed an
agreement that these plans started taking shape again. Condor had two Italian built Dornier Wall hydro aircrafts at
their disposal which were transported via cargo ships to Curaçao. Once in Curaçao these two flying boats, named
"Pacifico" and "Atlantico" had to be assembled.

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 9

On April 8th 1925 test flights were made from Barranquilla to Curaçao and La Guaira with the "Pacifico", which
had an Italian registration namely "I-DOOR". Four local flights were also carried out over Curaçao which cost $20
p.p. The Pacifico also carried out the first Airmail flights from Curaçao connecting the island with La Guaira &
Maracaibo. Passengers were also accepted on these flights for a hefty $70 for persons which weighted 70 kilos or
less (each additional kilo meant an extra $1!).

On July the 4th 1925 Aruba finally got the chance to see the Pacifico which came from Curaçao. It landed at
Paardenbaai (Oranjestad) with governor Brandtjes on board.

Emotions & expectations on the islands were high but sadly just a couple of weeks later in August 1925 SCADTA
changed plans and reassigned the planes for a test flight via Central Americato the USA and so removed the
Dornier's from the islands. These test flights with the initial plan to open a U.S. route from Colombia were blocked
by the U.S. government. SCADTA later re-assigned the "Pacifico" to fly the Panama-Barranquilla-Curacao route
and so the SCADTA continued to operate from Curaçao for the next couple of years. However they encountered
several obstacles during that time including an incident with the "Pacifico" and Paraguana. Details or where abouts
of the aircraft is still unknown. SCADTA later dropped their operation in Curaçao which were later picked up by the
emerging PanAm & KLM. Avianca which is still in service today, is the second oldest airline only to KLM and is
in any case the oldest airline in the Americas. It was founded in 1919 by German and Colombian industrialists. One
could fairly say that it is the airline that has served the islands of Aruba and Curaçao for a longer period of time
than any other airline in the world.

For additional Curaçao covers have a look at: http://web.me.com/scadta/Scadta-Philatelie/Konsular_curacao.html

I would like to thank Bernd Woehlbrandt for his enthusiastic help and expert advice and him graciously supplying
me with nearly all of the illustrations shown in this article.

Refs:

George W. Hoffman, SCADTA the First Commercial Airline in the Western hemisphere, American Philatelic
Congres#34,1968

R.J. Sutton, The Stamp Collector’s Encyclopedia. 6th edition revised by K.W. Anthony,Published 1966

F.J. van Beveren, De Ontwikkeling van de Trans-Atlantische luchtpostverbindingen, 1982

J.L.C.M. TSchroots, H.H.C. TSchroots-Boer, Luchtvaart en Luchtpost encyclopedie, deel 1, ISBN 90 900 35 91-5

www.copaphil.com

www.cherrystoneauctions.com

www.aerogramme.com/exhibits/scadtaps/overview.html

www.stampnotes.com/Notes_from_the_Past/pastnote248.htm

www.scadta.de

Netherlands Philately, Vol. 34, No.1 10