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.