I’ve written before about the Penny Post in the context of Christmas Cards, but I find the whole development of mail and postage in the United Kingdom interesting. For various reasons, I’ve been researching foreign mail – letters sent from the United Kingdom to overseas countries or vice versa.

In the beginning, such mail was very haphazard and unpredictable, sent by whatever ship happened to be available. We’re talking sailing ships, so too much wind and your letter could end up at the bottom of the sea; too little and it isn’t going anywhere. Other hazards included pirates and enemy ships.

Even under the best of conditions, transport was slow, relying on navigation techniques that only slowly improved over the years before the invention of the chronometer, as well as prevailing winds and ocean currents.

Sending letters overseas

A letter from England to Australia in the early years of British settlement might take eight months or a year to reach its destination, and if it required an answer, the original request is going to be at least 18 months in the past before the response arrived.

By the nineteenth century, when most of my stories are set, you had several options for sending letters from England to places overseas.

1. You could deliver it to a post office, pay their fee, and leave it to them.
2. You could ask a private business with overseas links to send your letter through their system.
3. If you lived in a seaport, and if a ship in that port was heading in the right direction, you could ask the captain to take your letter for you.
4. If you lived in London, you could go to coffee houses where ship captains met with merchants to bargain for cargoes, and — for a small fee — add your letter to a mail sack going to the right place. The coffee house would bargain with the appropriate captain.

Sending a letter from overseas

In many parts of England’s far flung empire, there was no postal system, but any ship’s captain would accept mail for ports along his route. With no regular service, the length of time before a letter arrived could not be known.

Say you were travelling to Cape Town, like the heroine of my next Redepenning novel. Mia might write a letter to her English relatives from the Canary Islands, and leave it to be sent back to England. But the next ship might be going to England via the Caribbean and then Canada, and her letter would therefore take the long way home.

From early in the 18th century, the Royal Mail had its own ships, called Packet Boats, to cover the route between England and Ireland, and England and Europe. The Royal Mail could also send mail on private ships, under the Ship Letter Act of 1799. The captains of such ships had a legal obligation to hand letters to the Postmaster at their first port of arrival in England, and were paid a small sum for doing so.

It’s a far cry from the instant gratification of email and direct messaging, but be patient, and it worked. Mostly. Eventually.