British Passport 1953 – The Island of St. Helena – Very rare
British Passport 1953 – The Island of St. Helena
GEORGE ANDREW JOY, Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Island of St.Helena…
Wow, what a (passport) historical treasure! Issued 1953 in St.Helena to an engineer. Revenue stamp of St.Helena and Malta. Visas Sierra Leone, Malta and Libya.Two stamps of ASCENSION ISLAND!
Joy, Sir George Andrew (1896-1974)
An official of the British Colonial and Foreign Office, also active in the field of psychical research. He was born on February 20, 1896, in London. He served in the British army and was, successively, assistant commissioner for the New Hebrides Condominium; resident commissioner and deputy commissioner for the Western Pacific; consultant for the Hoorn and Wallace Island; resident adviser to the Quaiti and Kathiri sultans, Hadhramaut States of Arabia; civil secretary to the government of Adam, and commissioner for civil defense, governor and commander-in-chief of St. Helena. He received numerous awards.
Joy served a tenure as secretary of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), London, beginning in 1958, and was a member of the SPR Council. He was later vice president of the organization. Joy died on April 25, 1974.
Ascension Island
is an isolated volcanic island in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic Ocean, around 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi) from the coast of Africa and 2,250 kilometers (1,400 mi) from the coast of Brazil, which is roughly midway between the horn of South America and Africa. It lies 7°56′ South of the Equator. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha, of which the main island, Saint Helena, is around 1,300 kilometers (800 mi) to the southeast. The territory also includes the sparsely populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago, some 3,730 kilometers (2,300 mi) to the south, about halfway to the Antarctic Circle.
The island is named after the day of its recorded discovery, Ascension Day. It played a role as an important safe haven and coaling station to mariners and for commercial airliners during the days of international air travel by flying boats. During World War II it was an important naval and air station, especially providing antisubmarine warfare bases in the Battle of the Atlantic. Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty from 22 October 1815 to 1922.British Passport 1953 – The Island of St. Helena
The island is the location of RAF Ascension Island, which is a Royal Air Force station, a European Space Agency rocket tracking station, an Anglo-American signals intelligence facility, and the BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station. The island was used extensively by the British military during the Falklands War. Ascension Island hosts one of four ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein Island, Diego Garcia, and Cape Canaveral) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. NASA operates a Meter Class Autonomous Telescope (MCAT) on Ascension Island for tracking orbital debris, which is potentially hazardous to operate spacecraft and astronauts, at a facility called the John Africano NASA/AFRL Orbital Debris Observatory.
British Passport 1953 – The Island of St. Helena
