The Packet Service
The Post Office Packet Service and its rivals carried mail by sea to the furthest reaches of the British Empire. Felix Rowe explains the role they played in our ancestors’ lives
The brave sailors of the Post Office Packet Service and its rivals carried mail by sea to the furthest reaches of the British Empire. Felix Rowe shares their stories
Today, we are inundated with ways to correspond internationally; and even when we need to send or take delivery of a physical item, we can coordinate and track it in real time from our mobile phone. Of course, it wasn’t that long ago that the situation was very different. For hundreds of years the people of Britain and her empire were reliant upon the Post Office Packet Service for delivering mail and correspondence around the world.
Regular, organised voyages for sending royal correspondence across the Channel arrived with the Normans, and routes gradually became more established for sending mail ‘pacquettes’. By 1512, Henry VIII had appointed a ‘Master of the Posts’ – effectively the founding of the Royal Mail. The role was later formalised as postmaster general.
By the 1620s, Dover in Kent was already well established as a packet station for sending crossChannel correspondence.
Eventually, these packet ships sailed from various ports across England and Wales, covering thousands of nautical miles across the globe as far as New
York, South America and Egypt. Crucially, as well as cargo and passengers they carried information – a vital conduit for the diplomatic correspondence and bureaucracy necessary to maintain a vast and expanding global empire. Regular departures and arrivals via established routes, with some assurance of safe passage, were critical to both the country’s economic prosperity and national security.
Thriving Economies
Each station effectively provided its own microeconomy for the local population, creating
a variety of jobs – from shipwrights to innkeepers – to fuel the wider operation. Today, thriving towns like Falmouth owe their very existence to the service. Yet, having once played such a pivotal role in both international politics and local fortunes, the service is now all but forgotten.
Many UK ports had at least some tenuous association with the Packet Service across its lifetime, and various factors could determine the value of a particular port in a particular year. Stations were strategically spread around the coast, which enabled the Packet Service to exploit different routes onto the Continent or across the ocean.
Three Key Zones
The main terminals (or stations) connecting Britain to the wider world were divided into three zones, covering the North Sea (at various points Dover, Harwich and Great Yarmouth); the Irish Sea (Milford Haven and Holyhead); and the Atlantic and Mediterranean (Falmouth, briefly substituted by Plymouth). In the closing years, however, these were largely eclipsed by latecomers Liverpool and Southampton.
As the gateway to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Falmouth in Cornwall was essentially the bustling information capital of the British Empire. The latest international news (such as, for example, victory at Trafalgar in 1805) could circulate around the town’s taverns for a day or more before eventually reaching government ministers in the capital.
With a large natural harbour on the south-west coast giving easy access to the Channel and the Atlantic, Falmouth was an obvious choice for an international station. Yet the location was largely chosen precisely because it wasn’t already an established town. In setting up base here in 1688, the Post Office wouldn’t have to compete against existing business and enterprises in the pecking order.
Soon, infrastructure and commercial activity built up to support the service – chandleries offering boat supplies, merchants for food and other essentials, accommodation for travellers and even laundry services. At its height in the 18th century, there were up to 40 packet ships operating out of the port. Regular coaches took the mail packets, and passengers, ‘up country’. Indeed, the mail coach took one Charles Darwin home in 1836 after his voyage on HMS Beagle.
Far from the mundane, life aboard a packet ship could be a thrilling and dangerous job – safe passage was by no means guaranteed. For much of the service’s duration Britain was at war (invariably with France and her allies), and the packet ships often encountered skirmishes with hostile ships. Risk of attack from pirates and privateers was not uncommon, and crew were trained to sink or destroy mail packets rather than hand them over. Some of these encounters have entered maritime folklore.
Compared with naval vessels, packet ships weren’t heavily armed, and although they carried some guns, they often had to rely on speed to evade attack. One packet ship, Antelope, had the misfortune of being caught three times by the French (released at a hefty fee). On a separate occasion, she returned the favour, capturing a better-equipped French ship.
the right thigh, by which the bone shattered, and which brought me once more to the deck. In this state, with a third part of my crew either killed or wounded, and those my best men, I consequently gave up all hope.”
The service struggled to find willing surgeons to sail, possibly owing to the fact that the Navy paid much better than the Post Office. Many lives were lost unnecessarily as a result, following skirmishes or other injuries typical of life at sea. Seasickness was common, alongside a host of other unpleasant conditions and even tropical diseases. When a surgeon was on board, he would double up as the ship’s chaplain, apparently being of appropriate status to read prayers to the crew.
Crew quarters were cramped and damp. Ships’ captains enjoyed considerably more comfort at sea and, when home, lived like minor celebrities with the finest houses in town. Captaining a packet ship could be a very profitable business. Many made huge sums of money through carrying passengers and cargo. Working on packets did come with certain perks – classed as government ships, they largely avoided the prying eyes of the Customs and Excise man, so a good private (ie duty-free) trade could be enjoyed. To all intents and purposes it was essentially smuggling, but done while flying the flag!
Although typically on a smaller scale, crew could supplement their meagre wages through individual trading enterprises of their own. A huge gulf divided the wealth, social status and rights of officers and those of average crew. Conditions were difficult, and unofficial ‘tax relief’ was taken as a perk of the job. When the authorities eventually cracked down on private trade in 1810, crews in Falmouth mutinied.
Competing Sea Powers
Inevitably, the fate of individual packet terminals – and hence, often, wider operational efficiency – was tied to international politics, which was in a state of constant flux. Competing European sea powers flaunted their aspirations of empire, and as alliances changed, some routes became more or less accessible or dangerous. Even bad weather, as when much of northern Europe was frozen in 1798, could be consequential. But the fate of one port wasn’t necessarily a reflection of the overall health of the service.
Our maritime history is characterised by perpetual rivalry between local ports for trade and custom, and one terminal’s downfall could directly prompt another’s elevation. For example, following the 1810 mutiny in Falmouth, its service was temporarily moved to Plymouth in Devon. The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) swiftly shut down the Dover– Calais route, with the Packet Service transferred up the coast to Harwich and re-routed through Holland. Later, Great Yarmouth in Norfolk provided
Life aboard a packet ship could be a thrilling and dangerous job
an alternate route amidst Napoleon’s Continental System: a naval blockade designed to stifle the British economy by severing its critical arteries into Europe.
For nearly two centuries, the Packet Service played a vital role in international communications and furthering Britain’s imperial expansion. However, the entrenched service ultimately couldn’t keep pace with new developments. The arrival of the railways didn’t so much kill off the service wholesale as render formerly critical stations obsolete.
The Packet Service had come under Admiralty control from 1823, and the established infrastructure was dismantled amid wider reform. Since new railways linked alternative ports to the capital, the advantage of a convenient ocean launch-pad was negated by the clunky road links once the ship had docked.
The End Of The Line
From around 1840, bustling ports like Southampton and Liverpool began to swallow the established routes, with Falmouth doggedly holding on another 10 years before the entire Packet Service was disbanded in 1850. From this point onwards, international mail was contracted out privately, with the new ships carrying the prefix RMS (Royal Mail Ship).
The decline in the Packet Service coincided with the rise of steam-powered vessels. The traditional sailing ships associated with the service were increasingly usurped by new upstarts in addition to private shipping companies. Other services now offered customers preferential options for transporting physical cargo and passengers.
The arrival of the telegraph cables by 1870 was symbolic of
keep The service ultimately couldn’t pace with new developments
the march towards modernity. Although the Packet Service had already been disbanded for 20 years by this point, it was another decisive mark of an end of era. A fundamental lynchpin of the Packet Service was the transfer of vital information. A feat that used to take days or even weeks could now be achieved within minutes via submarine cable.
To this day, former terminal ports in the UK still hold visible clues to the service’s existence, manifested in the names of local businesses, roads, schools, memorials and even newspapers (the Falmouth Packet) – the last vestiges of a fascinating era of maritime history.