The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

It has already been mentioned that at the close of the seventeenth century a mail-packet was a vessel of some 85 tons--a proud thing, no doubt, in the eyes of him who commanded her. The class of ship would seem to have remained very much the same during the next hundred years; for, in the last years of the eighteenth century, a mail-packet on the Falmouth Station, reckoned fit to proceed to any part of the world, was of only about 179 tons burthen. Her crew, from commander to cook, comprised only twenty-eight persons when she was on a war footing, and twenty-one on a peace footing; and her armament was six 4-pounder guns. The victualling was at the rate of tenpence per man per day; the whole annual charge for the packet when on the war establishment, including interest on cost of ship, wages, wear and tear of fittings, medicine, &c., being L2112, 6s. 8d.; while on the peace establishment, with diminished wear and tear, and reduced crew, the charge was estimated at L1681, 11s. 9d. The packets on the Harwich station, performing the service to and from the Continent, were much less in size, being of about 70 tons burthen. During the wars with the French at this period the mail-packets were not infrequently captured by the enemy. From 1793 to 1795 alone four of these ships were thus lost--namely, the 'King George,' the 'Tankerville,' the 'Prince William Henry,' and the 'Queen Charlotte.' The 'King George,' a Lisbon packet, homeward bound with the mails and a considerable quantity of money, was taken and carried into Brest. The 'Tankerville,' on her passage from Falmouth to Halifax, with the mails of November and December 1794, was captured by the privateer 'Lovely Lass,' a ship fitted out in an American port, and probably itself a prize, there having been some diplomatic correspondence with the United States shortly before on the subject of a captured vessel bearing that name. Before the 'Tankerville' fell into the hands of the enemy, the mails were thrown overboard, in accordance with the standing orders which have already been referred to. The officers and crew were carried on board the 'Lovely Lass,' and then the 'Tankerville' was sunk. Soon afterwards the captive crew were released by the commander of the privateer, and sent in a Spanish prize to Barbadoes.