[Illustration: Despatching a Mail--Sacks Loaded on Trucks. Despatching clerk, on the left, tallying off mails, sack by sack. Foreign mails are delivered to trucks sent by the Steamship Companies and are receipted for at the door of New York Post Office.]
This work, and also that of separating New York mail and mail for the principal States and cities, is done by the sea post-offices in steamers of the North German Lloyd, Hamburg-American, and American Lines; and when mails are received by either of these steamers they are ready for delivery in a much shorter time than when received by other vessels. In addition to the sea post-office service, the transfer service has also in the last two or three years materially reduced the work at the foreign department in the New York office.
No sooner has the "ticker" reported the Campania or other big liner "off Fire Island" than a veteran of the transportation department, accompanied by a few clerks and porters, hastens to the foot of Cortlandt Street and boards the Postmaster-General, the flag-ship of the post-office fleet. The boat was built for this service, and is equipped with spacious mail-rooms, chutes for transboarding sacks, and other expediting appliances. Steam is up, and she is off down the bay to meet the big steamer. She makes fast to her sides, and the mails are received aboard through the chutes, while the clerks check and verify the number received on a sort of invoice called "way bill," prepared by the London, Havre, or sea post-office. Frequently the passengers are still awaiting the quarantine doctor while the mails are speeding on their way to the Battery, where the New York City sacks are landed; then to the Pennsylvania Railroad, then to the foot of Forty-second Street, where wagons await the mails for the Grand Central Depot. Thus a great saving in time is often made, while formerly the whole mail went first to the docks of the several transatlantic lines, then by wagons to the General Post-Office, then again by wagons to the different depots. When the mails are handled by sea post-offices during the sea-trip, they generally arrive ready for the trains, and little but what is for New York City proper comes to the general office; but the large and heavy mails on the Cunard and White Star Lines, also on the French Line, are not thus assorted, and fully two-thirds has to come to the foreign division to be handled as previously described.