[CW] How was message routing done?

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

Ships sent TR "Transit Reports" when they passed a station, these were
either no charge or the local paper paid for them as "shipping news" -
Western Union would keep them to plot where you'd be but usually they just
sent the message to a "big" station like WCC, KFS or KPH and hope for the
best.  This happened at Christmas a lot, I was in off Egypt one Christmas
and KPH had a message for a crew member - it came via Western Union.

73
DR

On Tue, Apr 23, 2019 at 6:12 PM George <grmjunior at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> To send a commercial msg to someone on a ship, you just had to know the
> ship name or hull number and originate the message with WU. They would
> follow a similar procedure & either route it to the Navy (for someone on a
> USS or USNS ship) or to whichever of their commercial stations was handling
> that ship’s traffic.  BTW, there were routing codes usually attached to the
> message to ensure it got to the correct ship and ultimately the addressee.
> George N0GM
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Apr 23, 2019, at 4:15 PM, Richard Knoppow <1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >   Thank you. I think commercial messaging must have been somewhat
> different. What I understand now is For messages _from_ ships at sea the
> message would be sent from the station to its traffic office and then via
> Western Union wire to the final recipient. Or else message could be
> delivered by telephone (by WU or the radio company?) or by mail. The lists
> in some of the old books show wire cost per word which depended on the
> distance of the recipient from the radio station.
> >    This is the other way, how would I have gone about originating a
> message to someone aboard a ship?
> >
> >> On 4/23/2019 2:02 PM, George wrote:
> >> For USNS (Navy chartered) ships, the ship would send a message to
> whichever communication station they thought would be the one they would be
> copying messages from, say NDT for Japan. That communication station would
> then receive their messages & hold them. For USS ships (Navy), all
> Communication Stations in the area would broadcast messages for all ships
> in the area (encrypted, of course).
> >> George N0GM (former RM)
> >
> > --
> > Richard Knoppow
> > 1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
> > WB6KBL
> > ______________________________________________________________
> > CW mailing list
> > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
> > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> > Post: mailto:CW at mailman.qth.net
> > CW List ARCHIVES: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/
> > Unsubcribe send email to
> > cw-unsubscribe at mailman.qth.net
> > Subscribe send email to cw-subscribe at mailman.qth.net
> > Support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> >
> > =30=
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> CW mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/cw
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:CW at mailman.qth.net
> CW List ARCHIVES: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/
> Unsubcribe send email to
> cw-unsubscribe at mailman.qth.net
> Subscribe send email to cw-subscribe at mailman.qth.net
> Support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>
> =30=
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/cw/attachments/20190423/cc486d30/attachment.html>