As January sped away, bringing with it no change for the better, various suggestions were laid before the Postmaster General by persons who conceived themselves qualified to advise. Among these the most curious was considered to be one for the use of balloons. Great merriment was made in Lombard Street over this idea. It was brought before Lord Auckland in a jocular report, and he, minuting the case in the same spirit, professed his readiness to appoint the inventor of the notion to the post of “Controller of Balloons,” on the usual conditions of personal service, and of being paid after the return voyage. The project seems to us less mad than Lord Auckland thought it; but few men would have been found a century ago to whom the possibilities of ballooning had revealed themselves.
However, whilst one suggestion was being rejected after another, it was certainly desirable to do something, if only to avoid the reproach of inertness; and the receipt of letters of advice from several Greenland merchants in the city seemed to offer ideas which were worth pursuing. These merchants pointed out that it would be easy to collect a number of sailors who were accustomed to find themselves entangled in the ice, and whom experience had taught how to make the best of such a situation. A few such men were hastily brought together, and added to the crews of two of the Packets, each of which was also provided with an ice-boat. At Heligoland preparations were made for more carefully organized attempts to reach the mainland. All these designs were, however, formed too late, for while they were still being perfected, the thaw came, the ice broke up, and the postal communication fell back into its normal course.
So great a difficulty does not seem to have been caused by frost on any other occasion. But the time was drawing near when the will of one man was to erect and hold against English ships a barrier more impenetrable than that of winter, and during those years of doubt and of anxiety, the experience gained by the Post-Office in 1798 and 1799 was turned to good account.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECOND FRENCH WAR.
With the outbreak of the second French War, the Falmouth service entered on a new and better period. It is in fact to the years now opening that Falmouth men look back with pride and satisfaction, years in which one gallant action followed another in quick succession, whilst the officers and crews of every Packet seemed to vie with each other in courage and devotion to their duties.
A large portion of the credit of the better temper which manifested itself from this time forth must of course be attributed to the zeal with which Lord Auckland and Mr. Freeling had plied the reformer’s broom; but as no regulations or discipline from headquarters can avail greatly against a supine or hostile executive, it is only fair to acknowledge that the officers at Falmouth worked most heartily in the same direction as their chiefs. Indeed, it would seem as if the reproach cast upon the station by the conduct of the officers of the “Duke of York” had bitten deeply into the heart of the whole establishment, and roused them to shake off the old and evil practices which had led to such disgrace. There was a dark stain on the honour of the Service, and every man set himself to wipe it out. How nobly this was done the following pages will amply show.
Among a number of less important reforms which had been carried out during the last three years perhaps the most useful was the ingenious system by which the absenteeism of the commanders was checked, while at the same time a substantial benefit was conferred on the Service. A system of mulcts was established, under which every commander wishing to remain on shore when his turn came for proceeding to sea sacrificed a certain proportion of the profits which he would have made upon the voyage. But at the same time the sting was taken out of these money fines, and they were even made popular, by a regulation throwing them all into one fund, the interest of which was devoted to pensioning the widows and orphans of captains and masters who were left in distressed circumstances. Mulcts, which were really nothing more than enforced subscriptions towards an object which must be congenial even to the mulcted, were in fact not open to criticism. The amount of the penalty was sufficiently large to induce some hesitation before incurring it, but as no exemptions from it were granted, even for reasonable business, the pension fund grew and prospered, and proved of the greatest benefit to the Service.
Among the captains who by this salutary new rule were tempted back to their own quarter-decks was Captain Yescombe, the remarkable story of whose escape from a French prison in the year 1794 has been told in a former chapter.
Since the events there described, Captain Yescombe, at his own urgent request, had been allowed to perform his duties by substitute, on the plea of having received a strong hint that it would go hardly with him if he were a second time made prisoner.
What it was that he feared, or on what ground, is not easy to make out; but it is clear that he had some apprehension of more than ordinary danger in resuming his sea life, and that he managed to convince the authorities of the reality of this danger. It is therefore not a little strange to find that on his first voyage after the war broke out again his forebodings were verified, and his ruin compassed by a French vessel named “The Reprisal.”