cthia wrote:On another front, I always had a concern. There are instances where Honor and crew receives mail. The mail arrives in the form of courier ships, IIRC. What interests me is how the mail manages to find a ship. Of course, Admiralty House knows where a ship should be, but a Captain (for example Terekhov), may decide to drastically alter plans. So how does mail find a ship in those cases?
The US has had APO and FPO (Army Post Office and Fleet Post Office) addresses for years, and military forces throughout history have dealt with getting mail to and from troops in the field. With snail mail letters, sending encrypted copies to every possible location isn't feasible, but mail still -- eventually -- gets to the deployed soldier or sailor.
During WWII, the US forces used "V-Mail" a system of microfilmed letters with one roll of film for each APO/FPO address. The individual letters were printed at the APO/FPO and distributed to the units served.
(APO/FPO addresses are now tied into the Zip Code system, and military mail is handled the same as civilian mail)
It was the job of each APO/FPO to keep track of the units they service. For ships, it was often just keeping track of what their next port of call was supposed to be or when other supplies were sent to a ship, or what ship was slated to join the formation.
In the Honorverse, I would guess that mail would be routed through the flagship of a fleet or formation and sorted out to squadron flags and thence to individual ships. The next higher formation should know the general location/route of each ship under it's command, and would hold mail until a ship or formation (*cough* Tenth Fleet *cough*) deigns to report in from whatever wild goose chase or conquistador fit they've been engaged in.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!
(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
