Since we last featured the topic of lighthouses in 2019 there have been many great issues for the collector. Here we’ve made a selection from those produced in the three years up to and including 2022. Naturally if you visit PostBeeld’s freestampcatalogue.com website you will find many more examples.
Germany issued this stamp in 2022 as part of its annual lighthouse stamp series. The stamp features the Friedrichsort lighthouse that stands on a small island on the north-western side of the Kiel Fjord in Friedrichsort at the point where the Fjord has its narrowest point. It serves as a guide, cross mark and light for entering the port of Kiel and the locks of the Kiel Canal.
The “Lighthouse Series” was introduced in 1990 by the United States of America as a stand-alone set of five stamps but proved so popular that the last in the Series, shown here, was issued in 2021, five years after the death of the stamps’ famous illustrator Howard Koslow (b.1924-d.2016). The lighthouses depicted on the last set seen here are, from left: Montauk Point, New York State; Navesink, New Jersey; Erie Harbor Pierhead, Pennsylvania; Harbor of Refuge, Delaware; and Thomas Point Shoal, Maryland.
These stamps were issued by Uruguay in 2022 to commemorate “Artisanal Fishing in Uruguay”. It features the Punta Palmar Lighthouse (also known as the Punta del Diablo lighthouse), located on the east coast of Uruguay.
The stamp above, issued by Saint Pierre and Miquelon, shows the now inactive Pointe aux Canons lighthouse, situated in the harbour of Saint Pierre. The stamp below features a lighthouse keeper polishing a lamp’s lens. On the left of the stamp we see the 1881-constructed Pointe Plate Lighthouse.
Cape Rozewie is a headland on the Baltic coast of Poland, close to the village of Rozewie. In 2022 Poland produced the stamp sheet seen here to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the beautiful Rozewie lighthouse.
The miniature sheet for this 2022 Jersey issue features the famous Corbière lighthouse, with its original Jèrriais name “La veue d’la Corbiéthe”. Jèrriais is a form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey.
The main island of New Caledonia is Grande Terre and located at the extreme south end of the island is the Cap N’Dua Lighthouse, shown on the 2022 New Caledonia stamp above. Below we have a 2021 New Caledonia issue depicting the Tabou Reef Lighthouse in the foreground after construction was completed in 1890 and inset the lighthouse in 2021 after renovation work.
The Tabou lighthouse is barely 2 kilometres from Amédée Island, where the better-know Amédée Lighthouse is situated. Below is the stamp New Caledonia produced in 2015 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Amédée Lighthouse.
The Narva-Jõesuu Lighthouse, seen here on the 2022 Estonia stamp, is located at the mouth of the Narva River, close to the border with Russia.
This set of stamps from Aruba, issued in 2022 and entitled “Landscapes of Aruba” features the Nordwestpunt Lighthouse, also known as the California Lighthouse as a result of the ship of that name that was wrecked near the point where the lighthouse was eventually built in 1916.
Seen here on the 2021 Latvia stamp is the Irbe Lighthouse, the only offshore lighthouse in Latvia, located in the Irbe Strait of the Baltic Sea, 20 kilometres from the coast. The lighthouse was built in 1986.
Sark, a Channel Island protectorate of the United Kingdom near the coast of Normandy, is Europe’s first International Dark Sky Community. Sark has neither public lighting nor motor vehicles beyond tractors used for farming. The Milky Way is visible thanks to Sark’s offshore location, its generally low use of residential and commercial electricity, and its striking absence of public street lights. Star gazers from all around the world have visited the observatory of the Sark Astronomy Society (SAstroS), which is in the heart of the island. The stunning Guernsey stamp set released in 2021 shows as follows: 50p – A view of Saturn, Jupiter and the Milky Way taken near Monk Rock on Sark, looking south with Brecqhou on the horizon; 70p – A view of the night sky from the east coast of Sark at Point Robert Lighthouse; 73p – The Milky Way with Jersey on the horizon and Sark’s La Coupée on the right; £1.00 – A view of Saturn, Jupiter and the Milky Way seen from the west coast of Sark looking to the southwest over Mer Tower; £1.15 – Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3), taken from Little Sark overlooking Brecqhou, Jethou, Herm, with Guernsey on the horizon and £1.20 – La Seigneurie (the ancestral home of the Seigneur of Sark) silhouetted against the Milky Way looking west.
The beautifully-illustrated minisheet entitled “Georgian Maritime Lighthouses”, printed in 2021 but issued in 2022 by the former Soviet Union state of Georgia, depicts in striking colours three lighthouses against a backdrop of the setting sun. On Georgia’s Black Sea coast they are, from left to right are the Poti Lighthouse, built 1864; the Sukhumi Lighthouse, also built in 1864; and the Batumi Lighthouse. A very basic lighthouse was built here in 1863 but in 1882 the old construction was torn down and rebuilt using French labour.
Five lighthouses featured on the Taiwan stamps from 2020. Seen here is the Guoshen Lighthouse; the Chiutzu Shan Lighthouse; the Beiding Lighthouse, located on an island in the Taiwan Strait near the Chinese mainland; the Hualien Lighthouse; and the Taping Dao Lighthouse, located in the disputed Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea between Vietnam and the Philippines.
Ukrposhta, Ukraine’s national postal service, produced the fine stamp minisheet above in 2020. Shown here are the lighthouses Yevpatoriisky, Byriuchyi, Illinskyi, Stanislav-Adzhyholskyi, Mhanomskyi and Zmiinyi.
Then we have a 2020 First Day Cover from France featuring guiding lights and below the twelve booklet stamps that are seen on the FDC.
The top four stamps feature the Cayeux Lighthouse (or Brighton Lighthouse), located south of the Bay of Somme; Brittany's Grand Léjon; the Créac'h lighthouse located west of the island of Ouessant, which marks the entry into the English Channel; and the Saint Mathieu lighthouse, located near Brest. The middle four stamps show the Old lighthouse; the Eckmühl lighthouse, located on the tip of Saint-Pierre, in Finistère; and the Four and Cape Ferret lighthouses. The bottom examples depict the Espiguette Lighthouse in the South of France; the Sanguinaires lighthouse that dominates the highest point of the Grande Sanguinaire, the main island of the Sanguinaires archipelago. It is 18 km west of Ajaccio. It marks the southwest coast of Corsica and the entrance to the Gulf of Ajaccio; the Bel-Air lighthouse on the island of La Réunion, a French overseas department in the south-western Indian Ocean; and the Caravelle, on the Caribbean Island of Martinique.
And finally five Danish lighthouse stamps: (left to right) the Hammeren Lighthouse on the Baltic island of Bornholm; the Lyngvig, on the west coast of Jutland, Hirtshals’ lighthouse above the village of Stenbjerg; the Taksensand near the village of Fynshav and the Langelands, located on the west side of Omø Island.
