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1 Bottle of Beer Royal Navy Canteen
| Issuer | Royal Navy Fleet Canteen, Singapore |
|---|---|
| Year | 1950-1970 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | R. N. FLEET CANTEEN SINGAPORE. Issue One Bottle of Beer |
| Reverse description | Unprinted verso showing bleed-through of the obverse red letterpress text in mirror image through the thin paper stock, within a faint red rectangular border. |
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| Comments |
Royal Navy canteen tokens and scrip circulated within closed naval bases as a means of controlling alcohol consumption and limiting spending to official facilities — a system the Admiralty favored in overseas postings where local currency could too easily fund trouble ashore. The Singapore Fleet Canteen operated from the Sembawang naval base, which the Royal Navy maintained as a major Far East station through the 1950s and into the 1960s before the Wilson government's 1968 announcement accelerated British withdrawal east of Suez.
The denomination here is the beer itself, not a monetary value — making this scrip functionally a single-use ticket rather than a currency instrument. Whether it saw any secondary trading among ratings is unrecorded, but it would not have been unusual.