A question again - sealed orders now...

[Elena]

I know that Navy captains received from Admirals sealed orders, to be opened at sea at a certain latitude...

What would the orders say? I would like to know several possibilities... and yes, I tried to google it but I think knowing what exactly to ask from google would have helped me more .

If you have links, I can take and adapt to our story what I see somewhere too, I mean I won't copy it as such... But when I googled, it brought me to something totally different... and contemporary. That the sentinel cannot leave his duty and things

Thank you in advance...

[Mission]

Wouldn't it contain information that the Admiralty didn't want leaked while the ship was in port? It's the only logical reason I can think of the give orders that weren't to be opened until the ship was at sea. From there you can surmise it might be a mission or destination or something similar. If you're looking for an extant example, I would think the very nature of the secret orders would belie such.

[Elena]

Thank you very much! Actually yes, the idea of a mission and a destination make sense....

If you're looking for an existant example, I would think the very nature of the secret orders would belie such.

Why? It is secret until they are opened, but when they are opened, the readers learn about them... And a pre-existing example from somewhere might help with the wording (language). You know, I have researched (for other documents' purposes) letters of marque, manumission certificates, marriage certificates, pardon letters, then i wrote my own.

[Mission]

Why save something that is no longer a secret and will be known to all who want once the ship returns? All the documents you list are things that will most likely be required again in the future or have special meaning to the document holder. Secret instructions, once no longer secret have served their purpose and wouldn't seem to me to require saving for any reason, unless the document recipient were fastidious or there was some historical relevance to them.

Still, I suppose if they were anywhere, they'd be in someone's personal records (most of which have likely been lost over time - if you've ever sorted through a deceased's records, you probably found yourself tossing a lot of stuff) or the Naval records. Although, again, it would seem to me that the Admiralty would write such a missive, give it to the intended person and that would be the end of it. Keep in mind that if they wanted a copy, it would have to be hand-written. There were no photocopiers or even carbon paper [1806]. I suspect you'd be more likely to find references to what the ship was told somewhere in the naval records. Still, you might ask Foxe or PoD for more info on such a thing. I am no document expert, I'm just applying my version of logic to your question.

[Elena]

I found a sort of model how to write them here

http://en.wikipedia....Capture_of_Guam

I guess they might have had them in Hornblowers' or Aubrey-Maturin's series too, but there I can't search, and wht I found with the Capture of Guam is enough in order to help me write my own.

Edited November 18, 2011 by Elena

[Mission]

Yeah, but that's 200 years out of period. The language and spelling would be dramatically different.

[Elena]

We don;'t use the period spelling anyway, because we have almost a half of the writers not native english speakers, and it would get confusing to use an alternate spelling. This is why we generally discourage portraying the accents in phonetical writing, preferring to say: "He stated, with his Irish (or french, or whatever) accent" instead.

It is true, I would have preferred to see more samples as models, but... one has to be contented with what she finds...

Edited November 19, 2011 by Elena