OCEAN MAILS
The change which has taken place in the carriage of oversea mails during
the last hundred years is as great as the revolution which happened in
the case of the inland postal service. And in both instances, of course,
it was the discovery of the steam engine which accounted for the change.
In both instances, also, it meant the closing of a period during which
romance and adventure were the usual accompaniments of service in the
Post Office. The sailing vessel, beautiful to look at and with her
capacity to carry his Majesty's mails speedily and punctually depending
largely on a fair wind and freedom from capture by his Majesty's
enemies, is a more inspiring subject for the writer than the crossing of
the Atlantic within five days of the _Mauretania_ in spite of wind and
weather. Neither poetry nor art has found much inspiration in mere
speed. It is only a prosaic ideal of the modern Post Office.
In a previous chapter I have stated that the Dover Road is probably the
oldest mail route in the kingdom. The reason is obvious, because it was
the road by which the foreign mails travelled. The correspondence
between the Court and foreign governments was of no small account in the
time of the Tudors and Stuarts, and “ocean mails” in those days were
probably considered of greater importance than inland posts. But all the
mails except those to Ireland went eastward. “Stepping Westward” in
those days was to be an adventurer or discoverer. The Atlantic was not
yet a ferry: it was the Great Unknown. Dover, Ramsgate, Harwich, and
Yarmouth shared in the duty of providing packets for the mails. During
every French war Dover was useless as a packet station, and the
correspondence then went by Harwich or Yarmouth. It was partly owing to
the necessity for obtaining a port of departure less liable to the
dangers from foreign enemies that in 1688 Falmouth, an extreme westerly
port, was selected for the headquarters of the Post Office Packet
Service. Gradually this port became the most important station of the
service, and it not only served Southern Europe but the United States
and America. The story of this service has been admirably told by Mr. A.
H. Norway, and it is not my purpose here to do anything more than
summarise briefly the life of the old days. It is a tale of stirring
adventures and sea fights. In times of war and sometimes even of peace
there was constant risk of seizure, and every packet was armed to meet
emergencies of this kind. The instructions to the captains of these
vessels were to run while they could, to fight when they could no longer
run, and to throw the mails overboard when fighting was no longer
possible. Within these instructions there was abundant scope for
exciting voyages. These were great days for Falmouth, and her position
as a mail port gave her an advantage over the rest of the Kingdom. She
knew of wars and revolutions before even London could be in possession
of the facts.
The packets brought also bullion in large quantities, and on reaching
Falmouth the treasure was despatched by road to London in vehicles which
were known as Russell's Wagons. A walking pace of about three miles an
hour was kept up throughout the long journey, but there were many people
to whom the high coach fares were prohibitive, and who were ready to
travel by these wagons, sleeping by night beneath the tilt. The drivers
were armed, and when treasure was on board a guard of soldiers marched
with the wagons. It was a tedious but picturesque way of travelling to
London, and in the old days, when the roads were bad, and exposed to
attacks from highwaymen, there was perhaps very little enjoyment to be
obtained out of the journey. Still these wagons continued, not to run
but “to stroll,” long after the introduction of railways, and Mr. Norway
tells us that it is only fifty years since they “might have been met
toiling at their leisurely pace along the western road.”
Mr. Norway quotes from a letter written by a Spanish traveller who
visited England in 1808. What he says will help us to realise how much
the Packet Service meant to Falmouth. Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella was
the traveller, and he had just arrived by the packet at Falmouth when he
wrote the letter. This is what he says: “The perpetual stir and bustle
in this inn is as surprising as it is wearisome. Doors opening and
shutting, bells ringing, voices calling to the waiter from every
quarter, while he cries 'Coming' to one room and hurries away to
another. Everybody is in a hurry here: either they are going off in the
packets and are hastening their preparations to embark, or they have
just arrived and are impatient to be on the road homeward. Every now and
then a carriage rattles up to the door with a rapidity which makes the
very house shake. The man who cleans the boots is running in one
direction, the barber with his powder-bag in another. Here goes the
barber's boy with his hot water and razors: there comes the clean linen
from the washerwoman, and the hall is full of porters and sailors
bringing up luggage or bearing it away. Now you hear a horn blow because
the post is coming in, and in the middle of the night you are awakened
by another because it is going out. Nothing is done in England without a
noise, and yet noise is the only thing they forget in the bill.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: HOW TREASURE WAS BROUGHT TO LONDON ABOUT THE
BEGINNING OF LAST CENTURY.]
LEAVING THE OFFICES. KILLIGREW STREET EVERY MONDAY AT NOON
AND ARRIVING AT THE CASTLE AND FALCON INN, ALDERSGATE
STREET,
LONDON, ON THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, JUN 1833.
Bullion in large quantities was often landed at Falmouth by
the mail packets for despatch by land to London. It was
placed on wagons, which journeyed the whole distance to
London at a walking pace guarded by soldiers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This extract is extremely interesting, not only for the picture which it
gives us of Falmouth a hundred years ago, but because it bears out the
experience of most travellers from the Continent at the present day. The
more leisurely ways of Spain in particular are as sharply contrasted at
the present time with those of England as they evidently were in 1808.
There was considerable progress made in the building of sailing ships
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A ship performing the
Packet Service in 1693 was described as one of “eighty-five tons and
fourteen guns, with powder and shot and firearms, and all other
munitions of war.” The sailors were not extravagantly paid for their
services, but there were many recognised and unrecognised ways of
improving their income. One of the recognised ways was the permission to
take prizes if such fell in their way. There are in existence curious
records showing also that the sailors received donations and pensions
for wounds obtained in action. With that passion for precision and
organisation which has always characterised the Post Office, a financial
value was attached to almost every part of the human body. “Each arm or
leg amputated above the elbow or knee is £8 per annum; below the knee is
20 nobles. Loss of the sight of one eye is £4, of the pupil of the eye
£5; of the sight of both eyes £12, of the pupils of both eyes £14; and
according to these rules we consider also how much the hurt affects the
body, and make the allowances accordingly.” And we find that Edward
James had a donation of £5 because a musket shot had grazed on the tibia
of his left leg, and Thomas Williams had £12 because a Granada shell had
stuck fast in his left foot. Such were some of the inducements and
special increments offered to men to join the Post Office Packet
Service.
With the peace which followed Waterloo the fighting times of the Packet
Service came to an end, and in a few years the introduction of steam
navigation began a completely new order of things. The Post Office gave
up her packets, Falmouth was given up as a mail station, and the era of
mail contracts began; and if we measure distance by time instead of
mileage, the shrinkage of the world became more marked year by year. It
is interesting to trace this in the story of what is now called the
Atlantic Ferry. The first vessel to cross the Atlantic by steam was the
_Savannah_ in 1819, but she was partly under sail, and she took
thirty-five days to make the passage. The _Royal William_ crossed under
steam in 1831; but she took forty days over the voyage. Up to that date,
therefore, steam power was scarcely a rival to the sailing vessel.
Indeed there were cases in which sailing vessels had crossed the
Atlantic under favourable conditions in less than fourteen days. In
1838, however, a great advance was made. First the _Sirius_ and then the
_Great Western_ in that year made record passages, the one in eighteen
and a half days, the other in thirteen and a half days. The latter
vessel made passages for several years, and her average per voyage was
fifteen days and a half.
Then in 1840 came the contract with the Cunard Company to carry the
mails for the British Government, and the history of that company has
been a continuous breaking of records and of improvement in services.
The names of the huge vessels belonging to this company which have
successively lowered the Atlantic record are familiar to most of us, and
they belong in a special way to the story of the Post Office. There was
the _Britannia_ in 1840, which began with a voyage of fourteen days, and
the _China_ in 1862 and the _Batavia_ in 1870 reduced this record
considerably. Then followed in 1881 the _Servia_, the first of the
modern type of vessel; in 1884 the _Umbria_ and _Etruria_ with speeds of
19 knots an hour; in 1893 the _Campania_ and _Lucania_ with 22 knots;
and in 1895 the _Lusitania_ and _Mauretania_ with 25 knots. The record
has now been reduced to considerably under five days. The present
contract is for a weekly service to the United States _via_ Liverpool
and New York. The British Post Office only pays its contractors for the
weight of mails actually carried, and reserves the right to send
specially addressed letters by foreign ships: most famous among these
are the vessels of the Hamburg-American line, which have at different
times held the Atlantic record.
The White Star line has also since 1877 been regularly employed by
contract to carry the mails between Liverpool and New York, and the
_Teutonic_ and the _Majestic_, completed in 1889 and 1890, were the
first merchant ships constructed with a view to their use as auxiliaries
to the British navy.
The idea of the Travelling Post Office is especially suited to overseas
mails, and on these liners sea post offices are established, where the
mails are sorted in transit and made ready for delivery at the
completion of the voyage. The sorters are at work during the whole of
the voyage; as many as 250 bags are often opened, and the number in an
exceptional mail has often reached 700. The sorters are required to wear
uniform, and are regarded as officers subject to the discipline of the
ship, but they take their meals in the first class saloon. They have two
or three days in New York before the return voyage: it is a popular
branch of the service, and there is considerable eagerness to join it,
in spite of the fact that the Transatlantic mails are sometimes
extraordinarily heavy.
I can only deal with the chief steamship companies which contract with
the British Government for the carriage of the mails. And chief among
these is the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company, which, during
almost the whole of its career, has acted as the agent of the Government
in the conveyance of mails to the East. Until 1835 all our mails for
India were carried round the Cape of Good Hope, and the approximate time
occupied was four months. In that year a change was made, and the mail
was sent _via_ Egypt. The first contract with the P. & O. Company dates
from 1837, and this was an arrangement for a monthly service between
Falmouth and Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, and Gibraltar. The company obtained a
charter of incorporation in 1840, and one of the conditions was that
steam communication with India should be established within two years.
This condition was fulfilled, and the _Hindustan_ was despatched to
India, _via_ the Cape of Good Hope, on the 26th September 1842. But the
advantages of the route across the Isthmus of Suez, even before the
opening of the Canal, were sufficiently obvious to the directors of the
company, and they practically organised what came to be known as the
Overland Route. But the man who first established a service along this
route was an officer of the East India Company named Lieutenant Waghorn.
He deserves honourable mention in any account of the service to India.
He believed in this route, and worked hard to make it practicable in
face of innumerable obstacles. He was a man of indomitable energy and of
extraordinary stature. There is a story told of his visit to a country
fair with a friend. He endeavoured to enter one of the shows and was
refused admission twice. The friend sought an interview with the
proprietor. The only reply was, “I pray you, sir, take that gentleman
away. The fact is he is two inches taller than my giant.”
Waghorn lived long enough to see the Peninsular and Oriental Company
establish a regular service across the isthmus. This meant an
uncomfortable passage by canal boat and steamer to Cairo, then by a
two-wheeled omnibus for ninety miles across the desert of Suez. For many
years camels carried the mails from Cairo to Suez, where the P. & O.
steamers again resumed charge. The first mail service to Australia _via_
the Isthmus of Suez was opened in 1852. In 1859 a railway was made
across the isthmus, and this considerably simplified the journey. Then
in 1869 the Suez Canal was opened, but owing to difficulties raised by
the British Government it was not until many years after that the mails
were permitted to pass through the Canal. Since 1888 the direct sea mail
service between England and India, China, and the Australian colonies
has been continuous.
The mails leaving London on Friday nights are despatched from Brindisi
in specially designed twin screw vessels, which arrive at Port Said
about ninety-six hours after the mails have been despatched from London.
On this service the _Osiris_ and _Iris_ are employed, and there is the
curious fact concerning them that they are the only vessels in the
mercantile marine which cross the sea with mails and passengers only. At
Port Said the mails are transferred to the big liner which has come from
London _via_ the Straits of Gibraltar. The service is weekly to Bombay,
to Shanghai and Australia fortnightly, but since 1888 a contract with
the Orient Company for a fortnightly service to Australia has given that
colony a weekly mail.
The Union Castle Line to Madeira and the Cape provides the mail service
to South Africa, and ships like the _Edinburgh Castle_ and the _Balmoral
Castle_, which sail from Southampton, make very swift passages.
But the catalogue is a long one of oversea contracts, and besides there
is little variety in the nature of the service. There is an interesting
table in the Post Office Guide showing the approximate time taken in the
transmission of correspondence from London to certain places abroad.
According to this list the longest journey for a letter now figures as
44 days, and that is to the Fiji Islands _via_ Suez, but if you send it
by Vancouver the journey is reduced to 30 days. The longest journey
without an alternative route is to Hobart, 34 days, but Brisbane and
Manila run it very close, 33 and 32 days respectively. Bombay is under
15 days and Cape Town is 17 days. We are practically within a month's
touch on paper of the whole civilised world. We have travelled far since
the 25th of December 1815, when Charles Lamb wrote to his friend Thomas
Manning, who was in China: “Dear old friend and absentee, this is
Christmas Day, 1815, with us: what it may be with you I don't know—the
12th of June next year, perhaps.” Lamb's idea was that in writing to a
friend it was the day of the receipt of the letter that was the thing to
be concerned about, and how difficult it was to be with your friend in
imagination six months hence. When your friend was reading your words
“all your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns
rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age.” But thirty days is
a different matter, and even our friends in New Zealand or the Fiji
Islands seem only in the next street compared with similar conditions a
hundred years ago.
At home we grumble at the Post Office, and are irritated at the delay of
a single post, but if we are living abroad, or have friends and
relations in distant countries, the very word “mail” has a sweet sound
in our ear. If we spoke in rhythm, as people sometimes do when labouring
under strong emotion, we should say of the Post Office in a foreign land
or when parted from our friends, “How beautiful upon the mountains are
the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” “The feet” may be a twin
screw steamship, but the sight is none the less beautiful.
But besides the big foreign services there are a very large number of
contracts for conveying mails in British waters. Indeed, to examine the
list is to understand in the fullest meaning the term British Isles.
When we use the term we think of Great Britain and Ireland, and we
perhaps concede the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight to the group. But
there are also the Scilly Islands, the Channel Islands, the Western
Isles of Scotland including Skye and the Hebrides, the Arran Islands in
Ireland, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland.
Chief in the Home Packet Service is perhaps the mail service between
Holyhead and Kingstown. In the old days Milford and Holyhead were both
stations for the Irish mails, but Holyhead has always held the premier
position, and now Fishguard has supplanted Milford. Here is a copy of an
old advertisement published in 1810 in a Dublin newspaper. It will show
how the service was performed in the days before steam navigation:—
“Notice is hereby given that the Postmasters-General are willing to
receive Proposals for a Contract, for a period not exceeding seven
years, for Two Stout Wherries of from forty-five to fifty tons burden
for the performance of His Majesty's Express Services between Dublin and
Holyhead.” This is one of the stormiest and most uncertain of channel
passages, and the express services occupied anything from seven to
twenty hours or longer in making the voyage. The _Ulster_, _Munster_,
_Leinster_, and _Connaught_, the fine vessels of the City of Dublin
Steamship Company, have a speed of 23 knots an hour, and keep excellent
time. The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's vessel, _Ben-my-Chree_,
averages 24 knots at sea. There are fine services between Southampton
and Weymouth and the Channel Islands, and services slow but sure to the
western islands of Scotland and the distant Shetlands.
There is one British island at least which has no regular mail service,
but occasionally improvises a curious service of its own. St. Kilda is a
remote island lying off the west coast of Scotland about 50 miles from
the nearest land. The scenery is wild and rugged, sheer cliffs rising
from the sea in some parts to a height of 1250 feet, and covered by
myriads of sea birds. There are about sixteen cottages on the island and
eighty inhabitants. Two or three times a year during the summer a
tourist steamer calls there, but the island is cut off from the mainland
from August to May except for the occasional visit of an Aberdeen
trawler. The islanders, left to their own resources, endeavour to open
up communication with the mainland in this manner. They construct a
sheepskin buoy, and the letters are enclosed in a tin canister with
sufficient money to pay postage, and a wooden label is attached bearing
the inscription: “St. Kilda mail. Please open.” The mail can only be
launched with a hope of success in a gale of north-west wind, which
drives it across to the island of Lewis, a distance of 60 miles. In a
gale of this kind in 1905, the mail arrived on the shores of Lewis
within two days. In the mail boat was found money to defray the cost of
the postage. The dealer who sells in Glasgow and London the tweed woven
by the St. Kilda islanders received half-a-dozen letters. They were salt
with the lime of the sea, and in places scarcely legible. One of the
islanders wrote: “Very few of the trawlers have visited us this year
owing to the bad weather. I wish we could hear how you are all getting
on on the mainland, and especially how the Churches are progressing.”
The St. Kilda folk are keen theologians, and the struggle between the
“United” and the “Wee Free” Churches interested them keenly. They were
“Wee Frees” almost to a man.
[Illustration]
The mail boat does not always reach its destination. Three were sent off
on the same date, and two were never heard of again. The third was
picked up at Dunrossness, in Shetland, after having drifted for two
months and a day. But the letters, though sadly damaged by the sea, were
duly posted at Lerwick.
There is, of course, great excitement in St. Kilda when a tourist
steamer arrives. The resources of the little post office, which is only
a bare room with a table and desk, are severely strained. The inward
mail is never a heavy one, but the outgoing one on these occasions is
quite imposing. All the tourists bring on shore postcards and letters to
obtain the coveted St. Kilda postmark. The postmaster has a busy time,
and the post office is open for quite an hour, an unusual event in the
island.
There are still narrow seas in the British Isles where the sailing
vessel holds the mail contract, just as there are still inland districts
where the mail coach survives. Between the mainland of Shetland and Fair
Isle, the mails are carried once a fortnight by sailing vessel, and
there are similar services between Shetland and Foula, and between
Mallaig and Knoydart on the west coast of Scotland.
I have said nothing as yet about the oldest ocean mail route in the
Kingdom, the narrow channel between Dover and Calais. By far the largest
amount of foreign correspondence still goes this way. India,
Australasia, China, and Japan mails as well as European cross the
Straits of Dover, and as a mail station Dover is second to none. Mails
go also by British contract _via_ Harwich and the Hook of Holland, and
Newhaven and Dieppe, but the quantity is comparatively small. There is
also a Belgian Government service between Dover and Ostend, and a Dutch
Company's mail service between Queenborough, Folkestone, and Flushing.
The Admiralty Pier at Dover has been facetiously called “the pier of the
realm,” but there is a truth underlying the play on the word. The
connection between the Post Office and the Admiralty has always been
very close since the days of the Packet Service, but until recent years
the Admiralty was not much in evidence at Dover, and the description of
the pier would have been more fittingly “the Post Office Pier.” The
Admiralty has now, however, with the completed harbour works, entered
into possession; but the Post Office is still a working partner.