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HISTORY OF THE POST-OFFICE PACKET SERVICE
[Illustration: M M & Co.]
[Illustration:
Frontispiece.
WINDSOR CASTLE—CAPT. ROGERS, COMMANDER.]
HISTORY OF THE POST-OFFICE PACKET SERVICE
BETWEEN THE YEARS 1793–1815
Compiled from Records, Chiefly Official
by
ARTHUR H. NORWAY
London
Macmillan and Co.
and New York
1895
All rights reserved
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE.
My acknowledgments are due to Mrs. Ball, of Roscarrach, Falmouth, for
permission to make use, in illustrating this work, of four pictures in
her possession, namely, two of the action of the “Duke of Marlborough”
with the “Primrose” one of the “Windsor Castle,” and one of the
“Hinchinbrooke” To Mr. Burton, of the Old Curiosity Shop, Falmouth, I am
indebted for an illustration of Russell’s Wagons; and to many other
friends, in Cornwall and elsewhere, for very kind assistance and advice.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
FALMOUTH IN THE OLDEN TIME, 1
CHAPTER II.
LAX ADMINISTRATION, 13
CHAPTER III.
A FIRMER RULE, 35
CHAPTER IV.
THE WEST INDIA MERCHANTS, 56
CHAPTER V.
THE END OF THE ABUSES, 83
CHAPTER VI.
THE NORTH SEA PACKETS, 106
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECOND FRENCH WAR, 120
CHAPTER VIII.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM, 147
CHAPTER IX.
TWO BRILLIANT YEARS, 171
CHAPTER X.
THE MUTINY AT FALMOUTH, 197
CHAPTER XI.
THE OUTBREAK OF THE AMERICAN WAR, 222
CHAPTER XII.
THE AMERICAN WAR, 245
CHAPTER XIII.
THE AMERICAN WAR, 264
INDEX, 306
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
WINDSOR CASTLE—CAPT. ROGERS, COMMANDER, _frontispiece_
RUSSELL’S WAGONS, _to face page_ 10
H.M. PACKET, MARLBOROUGH, 128
PRIMROSE—MARLBOROUGH: COMMENCEMENT, 274
PRIMROSE—MARLBOROUGH: CLOSE, 276
HINCHINBROOKE AND AMERICAN PRIVATEER, 282
CHAPTER I.
FALMOUTH IN THE OLDEN TIME.
No nation can afford to forget its past history; and England, of all
others, whose power is so deeply rooted in sea-fights, should not be
careless of her naval records. After many generations of almost
ceaseless warfare, there has been a long breathing time of peace, an
interval which could not be better spent than in collecting and
recording the actions of those brave men whose struggles ensured our
ease, and preserving them for our own benefit, as well as for that of
posterity.
This task has been accomplished long ago as regards the great
sea-battles; and most of even the lesser fights in which the ships of
the Royal Navy were engaged have been sufficiently described. But there
remains a service distinguished over and over again, an ancient service,
highly useful to the public, and associated with a great department of
State, whose history has been left untold till all the officers
connected with it have passed away, and the personal recollections which
are the lifeblood of such a narrative are lost to us irretrievably—I
refer to the Post-Office Packet Service.
The very name has grown unfamiliar to our ears. It brings nothing to our
minds, recalls no train of recollections, stirs up no dim memories. For
the whole world, with the exception of a few people in Cornwall and on
the east coast of England, the Packet Service is dead, like all the men
who made it, and fought in it, and laid their lives down for it. It was
a fighting service, yet the naval histories scarcely mention it. It was
for a century and a half the regular vehicle of travellers; yet among
the multitude of books which treat of the journeys of our grandfathers,
few indeed take note of the fact that they sometimes crossed the ocean.
Its records, containing many a story which other nations would have set
with pride in the forefront of their history, have lain neglected for
eighty years. Some have perished through the carelessness of three
generations; some were wantonly destroyed as possessing neither use nor
interest. Even in Falmouth itself, so long the headquarters of the
Service, the actions which distinguished it are forgotten; and you may
search for half a day before finding some old sailor, mending his nets
in the stern of a boat, in whose memories those stories linger which
have never been collected, and which few indeed of his fellow-townsmen
have cared to remember.
Seeing, therefore, that this oblivion has descended on the Service, it
will be necessary at the outset to give some description of its nature
and functions, of the men who constituted it, the voyages they
performed, the profits they made, and so forth. This will best be done
by describing the life of a single station; and, as it was at Falmouth
that the largest number of Packets was stationed, and the most important
business transacted, there is no other station so suitable for the
purpose.
The town of Falmouth was associated most intimately with the Post-Office
for more than a century and a half. Indeed, it would scarcely be an
exaggeration to say that the town was made by its connection with the
Mail Service. Certain it is that when the Post-Office selected Falmouth
in 1688 as the point of embarkation and departure for the newly
established Spanish mail boats, the Department found not an old
established town and port, but a place as yet of the smallest
consequence, only recently incorporated, possessing hardly any trade in
spite of its advantages of situation, and hampered in its growth by the
jealousy of neighbouring towns. In all those traditions of the past
which made the glory of Fowey, Looe, Penryn, and a dozen other ports
along the coast, the Falmouth men had no share whatever. Their town was
a bare hillside when the Fowey men vindicated their claim to rank among
the Cinque Ports. It was nothing but a cluster of cottages when the
Armada sailed up the Channel.
This very absence of traditions and of vigorous commercial life made the
place more suitable for a Post-Office station, and may have largely
influenced its choice. It would not have served the Department nearly so
well to send its officers to a port where their affairs must have taken
rank among other transactions, and the despatch of mails might have been
delayed by the pressure of urgent commercial business. At Falmouth My
Lords the Postmaster General[1] took what was practically a clear board,
and could write on it what they pleased.
Footnote 1:
The office of Postmaster General was until the year 1823 always held
jointly by two Ministers of the Crown.
Throughout the eighteenth century the links which bound the Post-Office
Service to the town grew steadily stronger. As the numbers of the
Packets increased the local tradesmen prospered; the demand for naval
stores was incessant; and in those days of difficult and slow
communication it was necessary to obtain almost all supplies locally.
Shipbuilding yards sprang up, rope walks were laid out, inns were built
for the accommodation of the travellers who came from all parts of
England to take passage for Spain or the West Indies. A considerable
number of merchants found their chief occupation in supplying the
officers of the Packets with goods to be sold on commission in foreign
ports, for the statute which prohibited such trade was not enforced, and
many more were engaged in disposing of wines and lace, tobacco and
brandy, which were smuggled home on board the Post-Office vessels under
cover of the opportunities created by this irregular traffic. The sons
of the sailors, as they grew up, sailed with their fathers. The sons of
the commanders took up their fathers’ appointments, while the old men
retired on their pensions and their savings to comfortable houses in the
pleasant neighbourhood of Falmouth, creating with their wives and
families a society among themselves, and so binding closer with each
successive generation the ties between the town and the Service in which
their lives were spent.
And so as the town of Falmouth grew and developed it continued to be
what it had been at the outset, a Packet town, every trade and interest
which its inhabitants professed being drawn irresistibly towards the
important State Department which had settled itself down in their midst.
Merchants and tradesmen were to be found of course, who conducted
prosperous businesses upon independent lines; but it is probably safe to
say that at the end of the last century there was hardly one person in
the place who did not feel that he would have been injured in his
profession, and yet more in his sympathies and his pride, by any step
which impaired the permanence of the relation between Falmouth and the
Post-Office Service.
The life of a seaport can never be dull with the hopeless insipidity of
an inland town, and Falmouth especially, possessing a harbour which
formed an unequalled station for watching the French coast, had its
share of excitement in the coming and going of the warships. But in the
vessels belonging to the port, the Falmouth Packets, there was an even
greater and more enduring interest. For the Packets were the regular
vehicles of news. Their commanders were under orders to inform
themselves of the situation of affairs in every country at which they
touched; and wherever military or naval operations were being conducted,
it was to them that everybody looked for a full and accurate plan of the
campaign.
Thus the news for which all England was waiting reached Falmouth first,
and was ventilated and discussed in every tavern in the town a full day
at least before it was in the hands even of Ministers in London. A
look-out man was constantly stationed on the Beacon Hill above Falmouth,
whence the returning Packets could be seen for a great distance coming
up the coast. As soon as one was sighted the watchman hastened down and
spread the news about the town, receiving in accord with regular custom
a shilling from every woman whose husband was on board; and then the
people crowded out towards Pendennis to see the Packet sailing in,
speculating and guessing as to whether she had spoken with the fleet,
whether a battle had occurred, watching anxiously to see whether the
sides or rigging of the vessel bore any marks of shot—for it was a
common thing for them to fight their way across the ocean. Then the gigs
from the hotels, well manned with sturdy rowers, would shoot out from
the inner harbour, racing as eagerly as in a regatta to catch the first
of the passengers; and in a little while the Market Strand, which was
the usual landing-place, would be packed with people pushing and
struggling to congratulate the home-comers, to hear how stoutly the
Packet had beaten off a Privateer, to understand exactly where the great
battle of our fleet was fought, and how many French ships had been
taken. On such occasions the town seethed with excitement, and it was a
frequent thing to close the day’s proceedings by a dance on the deck of
the Packet as she lay at anchor in the harbour.
A Spanish traveller, Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, who visited England
in 1808, has left in his published letters an amusing account of the
noise and racket which went on in Falmouth immediately after the arrival
of the Packet from which he landed.
“The perpetual stir and bustle in this inn,” he plaintively observes,
“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.”
So vivaciously writes Don Manuel of what he saw and heard on his landing
in Falmouth, and while it would be futile to deny that his amiable
sarcasm about our national propensity for noise contains a grain of
truth, yet it may be fairly claimed that the affairs of an establishment
so large as that which the Post-Office maintained at Falmouth could not
have been conducted with the leisurely and well-bred movements to which
Spanish life had accustomed him.
There were, when the Don landed at the Market Strand, thirty-nine
Packets at Falmouth, of which one sailed every week for Lisbon, one for
San Sebastian, or some other port on the north coast of Spain, whence
communication with our army in the Peninsula could be maintained, one
for the West Indies, sailing alternately by a different route among the
islands, and others at somewhat longer intervals for the Mediterranean,
Brazil, Surinam, Halifax, and New York. The officers and crews of these
Packets formed a body of no less than twelve hundred men, all
permanently employed by the Post-Office, while the passengers numbered
between two and three thousand in the course of a year.
The mere coming and going, and the natural demands of so large a number
of people, created a great prosperity in Falmouth. There was plenty of
money in the town, and it was spent as freely as it had been gained. The
commanders were all making large incomes. The passage money was the
chief source of profit, and from this alone each one of them drew a net
income of approximately £1000 per annum. Their fees on the carriage of
bullion were more variable, but at times very considerable; while, as
long as the privilege of private trading existed, there were few
commanders who did not turn over as much by the sale of goods on
commission as he drew from the passenger fares. These, with the regular
official pay of £8 a month in war, and £5 in peace, formed the
commander’s legitimate receipts. Some people said that his financial
transactions did not end there; but that is as it may be. And, after
all, smuggling was not condemned by public opinion in the West of
England; though probably in the early years of this century much less
was done in this way at Falmouth than in the previous generation.
It may be interesting to record the sums paid by passengers on a few of
the voyages most frequently made in those days. The rates here given are
those current in 1807, and were somewhat higher than were in force ten
years earlier.
From Falmouth to Gibraltar the fare was thirty-five guineas, and to
Malta fifty-five guineas. The cost of the necessary provisions in the
Mediterranean ports was so much greater than at Falmouth, that the
homeward fares were higher still, viz., sixty guineas from Malta, and
forty-five guineas from Gibraltar. Passengers for Jamaica paid
fifty-four guineas, and were provided with everything except bedding;
but when they returned they were by old custom to provide themselves
with food in addition, and yet were mulcted of fifty guineas.
As for the bullion brought home in the Packets, there were landed at
Falmouth in a single year the following sums:
Dollars, 1,126,861
Doubloons, 17,829
Sterling Coin, £20,707
Gold (in ounces), 745
Silver (in ounces), 2,984
Milreas, 8,548
Half Joes, 317
Platina (in pounds), 50
Louis d’Ors, 10
[Illustration:
To face p. 10.
RUSSELL’S WAGONS.]
A treasure of such value demanded special precautions for its safe
keeping. It was stored in a chamber cut in the solid rock which forms
the hillside on which the town of Falmouth lies. This chamber was lined
with sheet iron, and its doors were of oak strongly bound with iron
bars. Here the treasure lay in absolute safety until arrangements could
be made for conveying it to London. It travelled by vehicles which are
yet well remembered in Cornwall, and which, in their day, constituted
one of the chief modes of communication between London and the West of
England. Russell’s wagons were indeed travelling upon the Great West
Road before the first mail coach bowled out of London; and as the
passenger fares by the “Highflyer” or the “Rocket” were beyond the means
of poor people, there were always some, even until the days of railways,
who preferred to journey with the wagons, sleeping by night beneath the
tilt, and trudging all day beside the wagoner’s pony. There was no
difficulty in keeping pace; for the rate did not exceed two, or at most
three, miles an hour. The horses never trotted; the progress was a sort
of stroll. Inside the wagon rode a man armed with pistol and
blunderbuss. The drivers were provided with horse pistols, and, when
treasure was in the wagons, a guard of soldiers marched up to London
with them, one on either side, two in the rear, to guard against
surprise.
The roads were unsafe enough in old days, but there is no memory of any
attack upon Russell’s wagons; though a tradition lingers that such a
venture was once planned, but frustrated by a dream which revealed the
robbers’ plot. Hardly fifty years have passed since these old wagons
might still have been met, toiling at their leisurely pace along the
western road. But the new railway was fast devouring the country; the
busy inns were closing one by one; that great silence was falling over
the country roads which has lasted until now. The passengers went by
train; the specie no longer came to Falmouth. The old wagons had had a
long day, but it was past; and they went the way of other anachronisms.
The illustration which faces this page shows perhaps more clearly than
any description, the picturesqueness of this phase of by-gone life.
It was not with the wagons that the change in progress either began or
ended. The construction of railways was changing the face of England,
robbing certain districts of their old importance, and raising others to
a consequence which they had never before enjoyed. The picturesque and
busy life of Falmouth was doomed. The same silence was fast stealing
over the port and town as had settled on the country roads. The townsmen
fought hard and long to retain their ancient Service, but the spirit of
the age was too strong for them. Bit by bit the Packets were removed to
other ports, and an old and memorable chapter of our history was brought
to a close.