“I am, Sir, your humble and obedient servant…”

ADM 1/1521

Can you imagine if every email you sent was printed out, filed, and bound into huge leather-bound volumes of “official correspondence”?

That is exactly what the Georgian Royal Navy did.

The Admiralty required every captain to report on battles, ship movements, discipline, supplies, prizes, sickness, and even the weather. Those letters were copied, organised, and preserved as part of the official record of the fleet.

Today, these volumes sit in the National Archives: mile after mile of handwritten reports from the quarterdecks of the British Empire. They are not memoirs or polished histories they are raw, working documents, written by men commanding ships at sea.

They are, quite literally, the email inbox of the Royal Navy in the age of sail.