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Colin
Tabeart- Research
Colin’s interest in philately commenced as a schoolboy
but lapsed for several years during his early service in the Royal Navy.
Returning to England in 1968 for a shore job he took up “stamp collecting”
again and joined his first club, the Portsmouth & District Philatelic
Society, and is still a member 41 years on. Here he learnt about “ship
letter” handstamps, and so began to combine his profession as seafarer
with his hobby by starting to collect maritime mail.
As his main interest moved to covers rather than the stamps, he joined
the Postal History Society (UK) and was subsequently put up for membership
of the Society of Postal Historians (a by invitation society for active
postal historians). Because of an interest in naval mails he also joined
the Forces Postal History Society and has been Editor of their Journal
for the last 5 years. As Colin’s interest in steamship mails grew, he
joined the US Philatelics Classics Society. For articles printed in
their Journal he was awarded the Elliott Perry Cup and the Susan McDonald
Award (twice). Finally after he subscribed to Sydney Views, his interests
in maritime mails swung decisively to mails between the UK and Australia/New
Zealand about 15 years ago.
Colin does not go in for competitive philately but prefers to share a love of the hobby in his writings and in displaying to interested Societies within reasonable driving distance. Colin has written several hundred articles that have appeared in various Journals in England, the USA and Australia.
His first published book (114pp) was in 1989, United Kingdom Letter Rates Inland and Abroad, 1657 to 1900 with a fully revised second edition (264pp) appearing in 2003. Another of his works, Robertson Revisited published in 1997 was awarded two gold medals. His next book, Admiralty Mediterranean Steam Packets 1837-1854 was published in 2002. In 2006 Colin produced a monograph (82pp) on The West India and Pacific Steam-Ship Company – The Mail Contracts 1865-1888, about which nothing had ever appeared in the philatelic press before, nor indeed has any fleet history ever been published.
However, the book that dominated his researches for about ten years finally came to fruition in 2004 as a self-published hardbound effort (430pp) titled Australia New Zealand UK Mails to 1880 which sold out in under a year. Since then, Colin has been working on research to take the story on from 1881 to 1900. At the time of his APR award, Colin had just published this 2nd volume.
In this wonderful hobby Colin has been lucky to
meet and learn from so many excellent mentors and now has friends and
correspondents in every continent and many countries