Making Sure the Message Gets to You

Looking at the inkwell in this display one is reminded that, until the mid-1800s, with the invention of telegraph, the postal system was the only way to get messages from one side of the world to the other. Literacy, and good calligraphy, were prized skills shared by only a comparatively small number of people. Recently, curators at the National Maritime Museum, London, made a poignant discovery. Among chests of material in deep storage were thousands of letters, written and sent by people in South Africa and the Dutch East Indies destined for their home in the Netherlands. None of these letters, written between the late 1700s to the early 1800s were ever delivered. They were taken from Dutch ships intercepted by the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. However, the loss of letters in the post was nothing new in those days. Shipwreck, mispacked cargo, ship’s being held up through non-payment of port fees and piracy were not uncommon, so a way around the problem was developed. That is, if you had to get letters and reports sent back to your home or business, you didn’t write just one missive and send it off, hoping for the best, you wrote at least three communications, then sent them off in three different ships leaving at three different times… that way your message might get through. Remember that when the Internet runs slowly.

VOC bookkeepers at work in the early 1600s. Pieter Serwouters (1601-1657) 
Credit: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. RP-P-1906-1878