The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

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.