Seeing, therefore, that this oblivion has descended on the Service, it will be necessary at the outset to give some description of its nature and functions, of the men who constituted it, the voyages they performed, the profits they made, and so forth. This will best be done by describing the life of a single station; and, as it was at Falmouth that the largest number of Packets was stationed, and the most important business transacted, there is no other station so suitable for the purpose.
The town of Falmouth was associated most intimately with the Post-Office for more than a century and a half. Indeed, it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the town was made by its connection with the Mail Service. Certain it is that when the Post-Office selected Falmouth in 1688 as the point of embarkation and departure for the newly established Spanish mail boats, the Department found not an old established town and port, but a place as yet of the smallest consequence, only recently incorporated, possessing hardly any trade in spite of its advantages of situation, and hampered in its growth by the jealousy of neighbouring towns. In all those traditions of the past which made the glory of Fowey, Looe, Penryn, and a dozen other ports along the coast, the Falmouth men had no share whatever. Their town was a bare hillside when the Fowey men vindicated their claim to rank among the Cinque Ports. It was nothing but a cluster of cottages when the Armada sailed up the Channel.
This very absence of traditions and of vigorous commercial life made the place more suitable for a Post-Office station, and may have largely influenced its choice. It would not have served the Department nearly so well to send its officers to a port where their affairs must have taken rank among other transactions, and the despatch of mails might have been delayed by the pressure of urgent commercial business. At Falmouth My Lords the Postmaster General[[1]] took what was practically a clear board, and could write on it what they pleased.
[1]. The office of Postmaster General was until the year 1823 always held jointly by two Ministers of the Crown.
Throughout the eighteenth century the links which bound the Post-Office Service to the town grew steadily stronger. As the numbers of the Packets increased the local tradesmen prospered; the demand for naval stores was incessant; and in those days of difficult and slow communication it was necessary to obtain almost all supplies locally. Shipbuilding yards sprang up, rope walks were laid out, inns were built for the accommodation of the travellers who came from all parts of England to take passage for Spain or the West Indies. A considerable number of merchants found their chief occupation in supplying the officers of the Packets with goods to be sold on commission in foreign ports, for the statute which prohibited such trade was not enforced, and many more were engaged in disposing of wines and lace, tobacco and brandy, which were smuggled home on board the Post-Office vessels under cover of the opportunities created by this irregular traffic. The sons of the sailors, as they grew up, sailed with their fathers. The sons of the commanders took up their fathers’ appointments, while the old men retired on their pensions and their savings to comfortable houses in the pleasant neighbourhood of Falmouth, creating with their wives and families a society among themselves, and so binding closer with each successive generation the ties between the town and the Service in which their lives were spent.
And so as the town of Falmouth grew and developed it continued to be what it had been at the outset, a Packet town, every trade and interest which its inhabitants professed being drawn irresistibly towards the important State Department which had settled itself down in their midst. Merchants and tradesmen were to be found of course, who conducted prosperous businesses upon independent lines; but it is probably safe to say that at the end of the last century there was hardly one person in the place who did not feel that he would have been injured in his profession, and yet more in his sympathies and his pride, by any step which impaired the permanence of the relation between Falmouth and the Post-Office Service.
The life of a seaport can never be dull with the hopeless insipidity of an inland town, and Falmouth especially, possessing a harbour which formed an unequalled station for watching the French coast, had its share of excitement in the coming and going of the warships. But in the vessels belonging to the port, the Falmouth Packets, there was an even greater and more enduring interest. For the Packets were the regular vehicles of news. Their commanders were under orders to inform themselves of the situation of affairs in every country at which they touched; and wherever military or naval operations were being conducted, it was to them that everybody looked for a full and accurate plan of the campaign.
Thus the news for which all England was waiting reached Falmouth first, and was ventilated and discussed in every tavern in the town a full day at least before it was in the hands even of Ministers in London. A look-out man was constantly stationed on the Beacon Hill above Falmouth, whence the returning Packets could be seen for a great distance coming up the coast. As soon as one was sighted the watchman hastened down and spread the news about the town, receiving in accord with regular custom a shilling from every woman whose husband was on board; and then the people crowded out towards Pendennis to see the Packet sailing in, speculating and guessing as to whether she had spoken with the fleet, whether a battle had occurred, watching anxiously to see whether the sides or rigging of the vessel bore any marks of shot—for it was a common thing for them to fight their way across the ocean. Then the gigs from the hotels, well manned with sturdy rowers, would shoot out from the inner harbour, racing as eagerly as in a regatta to catch the first of the passengers; and in a little while the Market Strand, which was the usual landing-place, would be packed with people pushing and struggling to congratulate the home-comers, to hear how stoutly the Packet had beaten off a Privateer, to understand exactly where the great battle of our fleet was fought, and how many French ships had been taken. On such occasions the town seethed with excitement, and it was a frequent thing to close the day’s proceedings by a dance on the deck of the Packet as she lay at anchor in the harbour.
A Spanish traveller, Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, who visited England in 1808, has left in his published letters an amusing account of the noise and racket which went on in Falmouth immediately after the arrival of the Packet from which he landed.
“The perpetual stir and bustle in this inn,” he plaintively observes, “is as surprising as it is wearisome. Doors opening and shutting, bells ringing, voices calling to the waiter from every quarter, while he cries ‘coming’ to one room, and hurries away to another. Everybody is in a hurry here; either they are going off in the Packets and are hastening their preparations to embark, or they have just arrived and are impatient to be on the road homeward. Every now and then a carriage rattles up to the door with a rapidity which makes the very house shake. The man who cleans the boots is running in one direction, the barber with his powder bag in another. Here goes the barber’s boy with his hot water and razors; there comes the clean linen from the washerwoman, and the hall is full of porters and sailors bringing up luggage, or bearing it away. Now you hear a horn blow because the post is coming in, and in the middle of the night you are awakened by another because it is going out. Nothing is done in England without a noise, and yet noise is the only thing they forget in the bill.”