THE SEA POST OFFICE
In 1859 the Postmaster-General, United Kingdom, announced that it had
been determined to open the homeward-bound mails on board the steamers
between Alexandria and Southampton and Alexandria and Marseilles, with
a view to effect a partial or complete sorting of the letters and
newspapers. He also suggested that the clerks entertained for this
service might during the voyage out be employed in sorting the letters
and newspapers contained in the mails despatched from England to India.
At the same time he inquired whether the Government of India would be
willing to bear their proportion of the cost of the scheme. The offer
was declined on the ground that English clerks could not sort letters
correctly for stations in India, where there were many places with the
same name.
In 1860 the Bombay Government reported that on the Europe side of Egypt
the former practice of sending an Admiralty Agent with each steamer
of the Peninsular and Oriental Company in charge of mails had been
abolished, and instead the Company carried a couple of post office
clerks to sort the homeward mail. They embarked on the Marseilles boat
at Alexandria, and before arriving at Malta they sorted all the letters
for transmission via Marseilles. At Malta these clerks were transferred
to the vessel for Southampton, and when the steamer reached that port
all the heavy mails were sorted. The Bombay Government suggested that
a similar arrangement might be adopted east of Suez, the clerks told
off for the work being employed in the Bombay post office when they
were not engaged on the steamer. The Bombay Government's suggestion was
negatived on the ground of expense in view of the unsatisfactory state
of the Indian finances at the time.
In 1864 the subject was revived by Lord Lawrence, The Director-General,
Mr. Monteath, agreed with the objections formerly urged that English
Post Office clerks could not sort letters for all stations in India,
but held that they could sort letters received by the Marseilles route
only for Bombay and put up in boxes the letters and papers for the
several Governments or Administrations in the provinces. It was then
decided that sorting to the above limited extent might best be done
in London and that, if it were done by a sorting establishment on a
steamer west of Suez, the Indian Government might be reasonably called
upon for a contribution. Thus the discussion ended for the time and
nothing was done.
The subject was revived in 1868, when weekly communication between
England and India was established. In the new contract with the
Peninsular and Oriental Company provision was made to accommodate a
postal sorting office and give free passages to sorters on the vessels
east of Suez. The Government of India decided to take advantage of this
arrangement and authorized experimental sea-sorting establishments on
the scale of six sets of sorters for fifty-two voyages annually in each
direction between Bombay and Suez. Each set consisted of a head sorter,
a sorter and two packers. The calculation was based on an allowance
of fifteen days each way for the voyage to and from Suez, with an
interval of from two days to six days between a return from Suez and
the next departure from Bombay, Notice was at the same time given for
the withdrawal of the Naval Agents employed on board the steamers. One
of the principal duties of these Naval Agents appears to have been to
report whether penalties for delay should be exacted or not according
to the circumstances in which the delays occurred.
In his final report in 1870 on the working of the system, as a
result of which the establishment was permanently continued, the
Director-General described the work of the sea post office as
"embracing the sorting of mails for transmission to the various
localities of a huge continent, as well as the checking of the accounts
made out in respect of such correspondence by the various European
offices from which the mails are received.... It is a work which, in
an office on shore, would be distributed among a large establishment,
each member of which would have to learn only a small portion of
the business; and it is a work the bad performance of which even
occasionally will give rise to the most serious consequences." The
experimental formation of the sea-sorting office had succeeded so well
that the inward overland mail was received at Bombay ready for despatch
into the interior, instead of having to be detained there for about
six hours, which often involved the loss of a whole day for certain
places. The Bombay delivery ticket-holders got their overland letters
at the post office window about ten minutes after the mail had arrived,
and the delivery to Calcutta ticket-holders of letters, which had been
sorted at sea, was similarly expedited.
The Indian sea-sorting office sorted letters for the United Kingdom,
but the London General Post Office did not reciprocate by sorting the
mail for India, the latter being done at sea, which enabled London
to dispense with a large expenditure for Naval Agents. Although the
revised contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Company provided for
proper sorting accommodation on their vessels eastward of Suez, there
was no similar provision westward of Suez; on the contrary, it was
specially provided that the master or commander of the vessel should
take charge of the mails to the west of Suez. The fact was that the
work done by the Indian sea-sorting office on the homeward voyage was
so complete and thorough that the British Post Office was able to
abolish all its sea-sorting establishments west of Suez.
The steady growth in the work to be done and in the number of men
required to cope with it gave rise to many difficulties in connection
with the provision of suitable and adequate accommodation on board the
steamers, the proper supervision of the staff, and the improvement of
the service. The sorting arrangements had to be revised frequently, and
the extent of the run, which, as stated above, was originally between
Suez and Bombay, had in 1890 to be curtailed to the voyage between
Aden and Bombay in consequence of the decision of the Peninsular and
Oriental Company to tranship the outward and homeward mails at Aden
every alternate week.
With the steady increase in the volume of the mails to be dealt with,
it was found necessary to add to this staff considerably from time to
time. In 1873 the total staff of the six sets comprising the "Marine
Postal Service, Suez and Bombay," was raised to six mail officers,
six assistant mail officers, six supernumerary assistant mail officers
and twelve packers, i.e. five men for each set. When the journey was
curtailed to the Bombay-Aden run the sets were reduced to three, but
the number in each set had to be steadily increased until in 1908 it
reached twenty-nine, consisting of an assistant mail officer, fifteen
sorters and thirteen packers.
In the year 1899 a special inquiry, made in connection with a question
asked in Parliament as to the effect of the introduction of Imperial
penny postage on work in the sea post office, revealed the fact that
the conditions of the service were very exacting on the staff. The
extent to which the sorting of the mails could be done at Bombay or in
the Railway Mail Service instead of at sea was very fully considered,
and, although the Committee of postal officers convened at Bombay
to examine the subject did not recommend the discontinuance of the
existing arrangement, its retention was made conditional upon the
adoption of a number of special measures to reduce the amount of work
at sea.
A further inquiry into the conditions of service in the sea post
office, instituted in the year 1905 in connection with a representation
on the subject made to the Secretary of State for India by the late
Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., again brought into prominence the fact that
the work had to be performed in circumstances of a peculiarly trying
nature. It also established that, owing to the rapid increase, at the
rate of 10 to 12 per cent a year, in the volume of the mails, the
question of arranging for the sorting work to be done on shore instead
of at sea could not be deferred much longer. This growth was bound to
involve further additions to the staff from time to time, while the
accommodation which it was possible to secure for the work, especially
on board the through mail steamers, was strictly limited.
The subject of abolishing the sea post office altogether, or, at least,
of restricting it to very small proportions, was again taken up in
1907, as the Postmaster-General, Bombay, reported that the service
could not be placed on a proper footing without the provision of much
more accommodation on board the through steamers, and expressed the
opinion that the time had come for considering whether it was not
possible to have most of the work of sorting done on shore.
By the end of 1908 the volume of the mails had become so large and the
difficulty of dealing with them on board so great that a radical change
was needed. The question of having the sorting work done on shore was,
therefore, fully examined again with the Postmaster-General, Bombay.
The position at the time was as follows: The mails for India despatched
from the United Kingdom were received by the Aden-Bombay sea post
office partly sorted for the various territorial divisions of India,
and partly unsorted. The unsorted portion, which amounted to about
40 per cent of the total, consisted of the articles of all classes
posted or received in London late on Friday evening, which the London
General Post Office did not sort before despatch. The Indian mails from
countries other than the United Kingdom were received by the sea post
office wholly unsorted. With the exception of trade circulars and price
lists, all the unsorted mails received were dealt with by the sea post
office between Aden and Bombay. The average number of the unregistered
letters, postcards, newspapers, packets of printed papers, and samples
which had to be sorted by the sea post office on each voyage from Aden
to Bombay was 150,000 and, in addition, some 7000 registered articles
had to be specially treated and about 6000 unpaid articles examined and
taxed with postage. This work had to be performed under very trying
conditions and, during the monsoon season especially, the staff was
hard pressed to finish the sorting before the steamer reached Bombay.
The accommodation for sorting the mails provided on the through mail
steamers was becoming less and less adequate as the volume of the mail
increased and no additional space could be obtained.
The proposal to meet the situation by again extending the run of the
sea post office to Port Said or Suez had to be negatived owing to the
transhipment at Aden on alternate weeks. Moreover, it was undesirable
to resort to a measure of this kind, as, quite apart from the large
additional expenditure involved in return for insufficient advantages,
the difficulty of keeping the staff under close and constant
supervision was becoming more pronounced. In fact, this difficulty of
exercising proper supervision over the enormous volume of work at sea
furnished in itself a very strong argument in favour of having the work
of sorting and dealing with these important mails done entirely on
shore.
It was estimated that, with the provision of all necessary appliances
and conveniences for dealing rapidly with the work on shore, a staff of
about 150 well-trained and efficient sorters could do within a period
of two and a half hours from the time of the _landing_ of the mails the
whole of the work then done by the sea post office. This number could
be easily provided from among the sorters already employed in the sea
post office, in the Bombay General Post Office, and in sections of the
Railway Mail Service working into and out of Bombay. The provision of
suitable accommodation for the sorting to be done on shore, which was
formerly a matter of much difficulty owing to the want of space in the
General Post Office, Bombay, no longer existed as the new General Post
Office near the Victoria Terminus, the building of which was then well
advanced, had ample room for this purpose.
It was unnecessary to enter into any examination of the question in
respect of the outward mails from India as the whole of the work done
by the sea post office in connection with those mails could just as
easily be performed, without any public or postal inconvenience and at
very little extra cost, by the Railway Mail Service and in the various
large post offices in India.
In view of the increasingly unfavourable conditions under which the
sorting had to be performed at sea and of the greater security and
efficiency that would be secured by having it done on shore, it was
admitted that the best course would be to abolish the sea sorting
service, but to do so gradually in order to avoid any dislocation in
the disposal of the foreign mails. The various Indian Chambers of
Commerce were consulted in 1911, and the general opinion was that
no change should be made until the Alexandra Docks at Bombay were
completed. The authorities of the Bombay Port Trust were accordingly
requested to provide a sorting hall for the Post Office on the new
pier. On the completion of the new mole in the harbour the mail
steamer, instead of discharging its mails in the stream, would be able
to berth alongside the pier; the delay in transhipment would be greatly
reduced, and with a sufficient staff of sorters on the spot the mails
would be ready for despatch by the special trains due to leave Bombay
within four and a half hours of the signalling of the steamers.
The question was finally settled by the outbreak of the War in 1914.
The sailings of the mail steamers became very irregular, accommodation
on board could no longer be provided for sorters, and consequently the
sorting of both the outward and inward mails had to be performed in the
Bombay General Post Office. The sorting of the homeward mail on shore
was undertaken from the 15th August, 1914, and the last inward mail
sorted on board arrived at Bombay on the 27th August, 1914. In spite of
war conditions, the first special train usually started within seven
hours of the steamer having been signalled. In these circumstances the
sea post office was formally abolished as such, and the Indian share of
the Eastern Mail Service subsidy was reduced by a sum of £8800 a year
on account of its discontinuance.
No other Postal Administration of the world has ever attempted to
undertake the task of sorting the foreign mails while in course of
transit by sea on anything like the scale on which this work was done
by the Indian Post Office. A certain amount of sorting of mails was
done on the steamers of the White Star Line sailing between Liverpool
and New York, and on those of the American Line sailing between
Southampton and New York, also on board the German steamers sailing
between Bremen or Hamburg and New York. The work done on those lines,
however, was on a very minor scale and a small staff of four men on
the White Star and American Line steamers, and of three on the German
steamers was employed. The strength of the staff of the sea post
office working between Bombay and Aden was, in 1914, one hundred and
three men, divided into three sets of one assistant mail officer,
seventeen sorters and fourteen packers each, with seven probationary
sorters. The staff was a most extravagant one; the men were not
employed for more than half their time. By using a large staff and with
proper organisation the work that took five days at sea is now being
done more efficiently in a less number of hours in Bombay.
Under present arrangements the mails are hoisted from the steamer
direct into the Foreign Mail Sorting Office on the Ballard Pier. There
they are opened and sorted for the various parts of India by about one
hundred and fifty sorters, and within three hours they are ready for
the postal special trains which leave the pier station for Calcutta,
Madras, Lucknow and the Punjab. Foreign Mail Service sections work in
each of these trains to deal with the final sorting and distribution of
the mails to the various stations _en route_.