mail

[nickelnan]

How does the captain and crew and workers get their mail?

[cattolica]

We had a friend who worked on a cruise ship for about 5 years. He gave us a list of the major ports where we could send him mail. We would check his itinerary and send things like birthday and holiday cards to the port he would be at closest to when we wanted him to receive the mail. I think alot of their "mail" is done via the internet these days. He also told us that most of his crew members just used the internet in ports and were able to talk to their family members via web cams.

Actually towards the end of his last contract the cruiseline he worked for set up a special website that was a live chat room. So, as long as we figured the time difference correctly we could sometimes chat with him there.

 

 

How does the captain and crew and workers get their mail?

[TheOldBear]

How does the captain and crew and workers get their mail?

 

An old time hazing ritual for young sailors on their first ship was to place them on 'mail buoy watch' ;)

[dane225]

We had a friend who worked on a cruise ship for about 5 years. He gave us a list of the major ports where we could send him mail. We would check his itinerary and send things like birthday and holiday cards to the port he would be at closest to when we wanted him to receive the mail. I think alot of their "mail" is done via the internet these days. He also told us that most of his crew members just used the internet in ports and were able to talk to their family members via web cams.

Actually towards the end of his last contract the cruiseline he worked for set up a special website that was a live chat room. So, as long as we figured the time difference correctly we could sometimes chat with him there.

Very interesting!!!

[cb at sea]

A friend who's been with Carnival for 10+ years has a PO box in the "home" port....whenever they hit shore, he checks mail. However, most of his stuf is done via e-mail/online.

[SwissDave]

I worked for an oil tanker business (ok not a cruise line, but they still had schedules and ports to get to), and keep in mind this is pre-internet days, and before the PC became popular even within a large Company. We did have telex systems though. The crews families would send all their mail to our office. This would come from UK, US, most European countries, and a fair bit from India and Philippines.

 

My job was to sort the mail into the respective ships, check their routing and scheduling and send the mail by courier firm (DHL, UPS etc) to the ships next suitable port of call. It would be sent to the ships agent in those ports and he would pass it on to the ship when it arrived.

 

I would think that these days most of their communications would be via email etc, but I'm sure that what I used to do still happens, expecially for documents etc that need to be seen by the person and signed then returned.

 

I did that job for nearly 2 years, learnt a lot about the way ships work and what happens at sea, but I never really fancied a job on the sea.

 

Then I discovered cruising........:D

[nickelnan]

Thanks a lot. I was just wondering.