The influence of wealthy merchants upon the Post-Office is perhaps in our own day as great as is convenient. But a hundred years ago it was infinitely greater. For the General Post-Office, which has now grown into something resembling a populous town, was then itself scarcely larger than the office of any considerable merchant. Between St. Martin’s le Grand, as we know it, and the office of whatever city firm, there may be interchange of views, but there can be no intimate association; and it is exactly this which existed between the Post-Office in Lombard Street, in 1793, and the neighbouring offices, which were as large, if not as important, as itself.
The Post-Office Packets in those days were carriers of news as well as of the mails. The officers had instructions to record most carefully in their journals full details of any events of public importance occurring in the countries which they visited. These journals, which frequently contained news later and more authentic than any which had yet reached London, were sent up from Falmouth immediately after the arrival of the Packets, and lay at the Post-Office open to the inspection of the merchants, who were thus continually in the office, inquiring and commenting on every detail connected with the administration of the Packets, proffering suggestions, and criticizing in season and out of season.
This constant association with the clerks of the Post-Office placed in the hands of the West India merchants very great opportunities of pressing their views about the armament of the Packets, and they did press them with such pertinacity and vehemence that it must have required courage on the part of Lords Chesterfield and Carteret to announce the resolution not to increase those armaments, but to cut them down, and to send the Packets to sea in future totally unfit to resist Privateers of their own size.
Such was the new policy, arranged in concert with the Navy Board. It was not lacking in audacity. The Packets stationed at Falmouth were of different sizes and varying rig. In future, all new vessels were to be of a certain fixed design, of 179 tons burden, carrying a crew of twenty-eight men and boys, with four 4–pounders, two 6–pounders, for use as chasers, and a proportionate quantity of small arms.
A vessel armed and manned in this way was clearly not a fair match for any but the smallest class of French or Spanish Privateer. My Lords the Postmaster General admitted this, and stated that their reliance was on the capacity of the new Packets to outsail their enemies. The most patient thought had been given to the selection of the model. It was believed that vessels built on the new design would outsail most things afloat, and in order to give them a fair chance of doing so they were to carry as little weight of metal as possible. If they could keep off row-boats on entering or leaving the channel, more was scarcely expected of them save in the last resort. The commander’s duties were summed up in this formula, “You must run where you can. You must fight when you can no longer run, and when you can fight no more you must sink the mails before you strike.”
Here at one blow perished the system of Privateering in the Packet Service. A ship armed so lightly could not afford to cruise after prizes, but was sufficiently concerned with her own safety.
The West India merchants prophesied disaster, and indeed it seems that the Postmaster General in framing their plans were not untainted by the proverbially excessive zeal of the convert. The events of the next few years certainly suggest that the point of safety had been passed in reducing the armaments; and all the changes effected by further experience throughout the war were in the direction of increase.
Such as the system was, however, it was established, and My Lords had no time to discuss its merits or defects. The declaration of war burst upon them before their plans were executed, and forthwith the General Post-Office was beset with armourers and powder merchants, while the clerks were called off from handling letters and newspapers to discuss the pattern of a boarding pike, or to consult with Mr. Nock about the quality of the pistols which he had supplied.
Not one of the Packets had received its armament when the war broke out. It had not lasted three weeks when an incident occurred which showed how little time there was to waste.
The declaration of war had been immediately followed by a general embargo on shipping, but, in pursuance of an agreement between the French and English Governments, an order in Council exempted from this embargo Packets, and bye boats (vessels hired temporarily for the Postal Service), and announced that they were to continue to run for some time longer.