Back in the day (before cell phones, internet, etc) there were letters, and if you were really lucky, expensive phone calls in port.

So, there was always this race to spread the phone number around when a ship tied up to the pier overseas, so everyone could call their guy.

Once (I think they were somewhere in Italy? Med, anyway) someone got the phone number wrong, and drove some poor woman buggy. Her phone rang day and night with lonely women trying to track down their men. She got tired of trying to fix the unfixable, and took to answering them: "no, he can't come to the phone right now. He's got my #$&@ in his mouth."

Dani