Tuck’s ‘Oilette’ postcards are beautiful, artist impression postcards and they made them for Olympic, Titanic, Adriatic, Homeric and Majestic II among others. The ‘Celebrated Liners’ series are printed postcards taken from the original oil paintings and the colour is really impressive.

Tuck was a major London publishing house and they produced artist postcards of many British liners, including White Star and Cunard ships, from c1905 to 1930. Each card has a neat summary of a ship’s career and key statistics on the back.

Among my favourites is a vertical card showing ‘Olympic’ steaming at full speed on the open sea by the renowned painter Montague Birrel Black. In fact, more than any other card, it helped inspire me to collect shipping postcards in the first place!

When I was a child, my grandfather showed me he had copied this postcard in oil paints into a small autograph book! For an eight-year-old he had done quite a remarkable job and it is one of my most treasured family mementoes.

Of course, there is an Oilette of what was, briefly, in the spring of 1912 the largest vessel in the world, the Titanic. The postcard shows her steaming from right to left at sea and it is relatively harder to find.

The artist presumably did not realise, or it was too late, to add the detail of the enclosed Promenade Deck windows (a last minute design change in March 1912 so as to protect passengers from sea spray). There are two editions of the card, one made before she sank and an otherwise identical card made after which has details of the sinking.

Prices for Tuck cards can be as little as a few pounds but rare Titanic cards could be £100 or more.

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