The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

But between different parts of the United Kingdom, not a century ago, it is remarkable how infrequent the communications sometimes were. Nowadays, there are three or four mails a-week between the mainland and Lerwick, in Shetland, whereas in 1802 the mails between these parts were carried only ten times a-year, the trips in December and January being omitted owing to the stormy character of the weather. The contract provided that there should be used "a sufficiently strong-built packet," and the allowance granted for the service was L120 per annum. It may perhaps be worthy of notice that the amount of postage upon letters sent to Shetland in the year ended the 5th July 1802 was no more than L199, 19s. 1d. It was also stipulated, by the terms of the agreement, that the contractors should adopt a proper search of their own servants, lest they should privately convey letters to the injury of the revenue; and they were also required to take measures against passengers by the packet transgressing in the same way. On one occasion the good people in these northern islands, when memorialising for more frequent postal service, suggested that the packets would be of great use in spying out and reporting the presence of French privateers on the coast; but the Postmaster-General of the period took the sensible view that the less the packets saw of French privateers the better it would be for the packet service. Difficulties are experienced even in the present day in communicating with some of the outlying islands of the north of Scotland, weeks and occasionally months passing without the boats carrying the mails being able to make the passage. The following is from a report made by the postmaster of Lerwick on the 27th March 1883, with reference to the interruption of the mail-service with Foula, an outlying island of the Shetland group:--