In looking back on these events one cannot but suppose that in thus vitally altering the ancient conditions of service on the Falmouth station the Government were actuated by some motive much more potent than the desire to gratify a single individual. It must have been foreseen that the sailors would resent the loss of their large profits; that the chief attraction of the Service in their eyes was about to be destroyed, and this in the midst of a dangerous and costly war.
The discontent showed itself at once. There was something resembling mutiny at Falmouth. The crews of several vessels refused to proceed to sea, and their captains reported that they could not obtain sailors unless the trade were restored. The Government stood firm. The memorials of the seamen pointed out that their wages, if they must rely on them solely, were not sufficient for their maintenance and for that of their families. The statement was perfectly true, for the trade had been so fully recognized by the authorities that it was always held to be unnecessary to pay any but low wages to men who were earning so much by private speculation. The wages had to be increased, but the increase of course could not be equivalent to the amount of profit lost by the new rule; and a smouldering mass of discontent was left at Falmouth which in years to come broke out again and again into mutiny.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NORTH SEA PACKETS.
Thus far, for the sake of clearness, the narrative has concerned itself with the Falmouth Packets alone. The successive developments by which the root of the mischief existing on the Cornish station gradually revealed itself to all the world were too important to be complicated with the affairs of other stations, especially when those affairs, with very few exceptions, were neither interesting nor considerable. In fact, it is only on the stations whence the North Sea Packets sailed that one is tempted to linger at all after leaving Falmouth. The record of the Irish Packets is incomparably dull. Squabbles between the Post-Office of Great Britain and the Post-Office of Ireland about the precise amount of influence which each should exercise over the Holyhead or the Milford boats, interminable arguments concerning the regulations under which noblemen’s carriages might be stowed on deck during the voyage, lengthy surveys of the coast, complaints from the agent that the captains were disrespectful and from the captains that the agent interfered unwarrantably in their private affairs—such were the subjects of the bulky reports which filled the pigeon-holes devoted at the General Post-Office to the affairs of the two lines of communication with the opposite side of St. George’s Channel.
The Irish Packets, so far as we know, were never in action during the years of which this volume treats. Almost the same remark indeed might be made of the North Sea Packets; but here an interest of another kind arises. The Harwich and Dover boats played manfully a part in a drama of the greatest moment to this country. It was a game in which shot and powder had scarcely any part; yet it called for courage of the highest order, and for resource and seamanship such as British sailors have always shown themselves possessed of in time of need.
The Continental system which called out these faculties was as yet only a dream in Napoleon’s heart; and the story of the North Sea Packets might have been left untouched until that system began to develop itself, had it not happened by a curious chance of fortune that in the year 1798 a sort of rehearsal occurred of the dangers of that troublous time which was yet to come. The winter proved to be of extraordinary severity. The shores of Holland and Northern Germany were beset with ice; the rivers were all closed, and by a sudden turn of temperature the Post-Office was confronted with the identical situation which the masterful hostility of Napoleon created a few years afterwards.
Before proceeding to speak of the difficulties thus created, it will be necessary to explain that the North Sea Packets by no means corresponded to the Falmouth model. Small as the Cornish Packets must appear in the eyes of our generation, accustomed to the vast dimensions of the floating palaces in which travellers of to-day make the Atlantic voyage, the Harwich and Dover boats were smaller still. Many of them indeed were of only fifty tons, while none exceeded eighty tons. The Harwich boats, which plied to Helvoetsluis as their normal port of call, were a trifle larger than the Dover Packets which undertook the shorter voyage to Calais, and they carried somewhat heavier guns. Three-pounders were found to be too heavy for the Dover boats, and had to be exchanged for two-pounders; but the Harwich Packets always carried four four-pounders, and at a later period some of them were allowed a couple of extra guns of the same calibre.
In 1793, when the war broke out, the port of Calais was of course closed to English ships, and the mails for Italy and the Mediterranean could no longer cross France. The situation thus created was too familiar in the last century to occasion any embarrassment at the General Post-Office. In fact, the relations between the Postal authorities in London and Paris were in those days so much the reverse of cordial, even when the two countries were at peace, that the outbreak of hostilities seems to have been not altogether unwelcome at Lombard Street, as closing a channel of communication which had never been used without friction and dispute.
The Dover station was at once closed, and the Packets transferred to Harwich, whence, after a short interval, the whole fleet of both stations was removed to Yarmouth, a port which was supposed to be more conveniently situated for the duties which lay before them. All the mails were forwarded to Helvoetsluis. The relations between the Post-Offices of England and Holland had always been good; and the Service worked well and smoothly until the French power menaced the integrity of Holland.
Throughout the year 1794 the rupture of relations with Holland loomed through the troubled atmosphere, and early in 1795 it became an accomplished fact. Town after town declared for the French. Pichegru’s cavalry, careering over the frozen waters of the Texel, captured the Dutch fleet; the English troops retreated; the Batavian Republic was proclaimed; the resources of Holland were added to those of France, and another outlet for the Continental mails must be found, Helvoetsluis being henceforth closed against us as rigidly as any port in France itself.