J. W. Westcott II
Mail Boat and Floating Zip Code
J. W. Westcott II is a post office boat that delivers mail to ships while they are underway. It operates out of Detroit, Michigan, and, as it is an official post office for the United States Postal Service, it also contains the only floating ZIP Code in the United States—48222.
History
The Westcott company was established in 1874 by Captain John Ward Westcott, who ferried supplies (and by 1895 the mail) to passing ships via rowboat. J. W. Westcott II is named for him.
Operation
Any mail addressed to members of ships' crews on vessels transiting the Detroit River can be delivered to them via J. W. Westcott II by being addressed "Vessel Name, Marine Post Office, Detroit, Michigan, 48222." The US postal zip code 48222 is exclusive to the floating post office and its ship addressees; as of 2016, the boat had a contract with the US Postal Service through 2021. The mail is delivered to the appropriate ships (mainly lake freighters) as they transit the Detroit River, utilizing ropes and buckets.
Sinking
On 23 October 2001, J. W. Westcott II sank in the deep water under the Ambassador Bridge while caught in the wake of Norwegian oil tanker MT Sidsel Knutsen. The captain and one other crew member were killed; the two passengers, both pilots, were rescued. J. W. Westcott II was later salvaged, refurbished and returned to service.
See also
Boat railway post office – Over-water postal service in the US
Mail jumping – Type of mail delivery
References
Further reading
Bergel, Colin (2000).
“J. W. Westcott II” enters the record as mail Boat and Floating Zip Code. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Westcott, Mail and Boat can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6107404. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1874, 1895, 2016 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “J. W. Westcott II” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.