In 1916, what unusual cargo did a New York businessman successfully mail to his father in Ireland using regular parcel post?

Question

Accepted Answer

Himself

On a gray February morning in 1916, William Henry Bates walked into a New York post office with an audacious plan: he would mail himself across the Atlantic Ocean. Bates, who couldn't afford conventional steamship passage to visit his ailing father in Dublin, had discovered a remarkable loophole in postal regulations. Parcel post to Ireland cost significantly less than passenger fare, and nowhere in the rulebook did it explicitly forbid shipping a human being.

Bates purchased $1.87 worth of stamps (about $53 in today's money), affixed them to his jacket, and had himself officially registered as a package. He walked onto the steamship as cargo, complete with a postal clerk escort as required by law. For the entire voyage, he was technically mail—sleeping in crew quarters, eating with the staff, and existing in a bureaucratic gray zone between passenger and parcel. Upon arrival in Ireland, his father signed for him as one would any delivery.

The stunt made international headlines and exposed an absurdity in maritime shipping regulations that had somehow persisted for years. The U.S. Post Office, mortified by the publicity, immediately amended its rules to explicitly prohibit mailing people. But Bates had proven a point about the letter of the law versus its spirit—and saved himself about $40 in the process.

The incident remains a quirky footnote in postal history, a reminder that sometimes the most creative solutions to life's problems involve treating yourself as freight. Bates's transatlantic journey as certified mail predated modern budget airlines by decades, though his customer service experience was probably better.

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