Mr. Jean-Louis Araignon has been looking in this vessel depicts on the stamp, and he gives:
The vessel depict on this stamp to honour Albert Londres 1884 -1932 is most probably the French vessel MARTINIÉRE, she transported convicts from France to French Guyana.
Albert Londres wrote on the bad conditions of the transport of convicts.
The French post gives ‘the vessel depict on the stamp, carried convicts to French Guyana’.
Comparing the stamp with the photo’s I got from Mr. Araignon she could be the vessel, but the designer as it looks has made some alternations, she had a straight stem, it looks that the stem on the stamp is not straight, but more modern, and her accommodation block looks larger than on the photo’s, when built, but that is possible altered later when used in the convict transport.
Built as steel hulled cargo vessel under yard No.786 by W.Gray & Co., Ltd., West Hartlepool, U.K. for Anglo-Algerian SS Co. (1896), Ltd. (F.C. Strick & Co., Ltd.), Swansea, U.K.
02 January 1911 launched under the name ARMANISTAN.
Tonnage 3.511 grt., 2.202 net, dim. 109.73 x 14.35 x 6.93m.
Powered by one 3-cyl triple expansion steamengine 386 nhp., speed 11 knots.
February 1911 completed.
1912 Bought by the Hamburg-Amerika Linie, Hamburg and renamed DUALA.
She was bought for the West Africa service.
1914 After a brief service as a naval supply vessel for the German Navy, was she laid up at Las Palmas, Canary Islands.
09 June 1919 ceded to the France Government.
1921 Transferred or bought at Lorient to/by Cie. Nantaise de Navigation. á Vapeur, Nantes, France, renamed in MARTINIÉRE. (her funnel was black, whit four white stars around a white circle, enclosing a blue N. This company was responsibly for the transport of convicts to the French colonies from 1886.)
She was fitted out for the convict transport of the French Administration, to the French colonies, with in the tweendecks 8 cages on starboard and on port side, to accommodate about 650 convicts.
From 1923 was she used in the convict transport.
1938 Bought by Cie. Générale Transatlantique, Nantes.
1939 Transferred to the French Navy, used as a hulk at Lorient.
Spring 1940 during a German air attack sunk.
Refloated after German occupation and outfitted as a floating anti-aircraft battery, recovered by the French Navy 1945.
March 1955 broken up at St. Nazaire.
France 2007 0.54 Euro, sg?, scott?
Source: Merchant Fleets in profile Volume 4 by Duncan Haws. Register of Merchant Ships completed in 1911.