That the right port was chosen there cannot be a doubt. The extreme westerly position of Falmouth Harbour gives it an advantage which is rendered evident by a single glance at the map. From no other harbour in this country can an outward bound vessel clear the land so soon. No other is so quickly reached by one homeward bound running for shelter. On the darkest nights and in dense fog, ships unacquainted with the harbour enter it in safety, so easy is it of access; and sailing vessels can leave it in any wind, save one blowing strongly from the east or south-east. The prevalent gales in the English Channel are from the west. These are head winds for a ship leaving Plymouth, the port with which Falmouth is most naturally compared; but they are favourable for Falmouth. In fact, it happened only on very rare occasions that the despatch of the mails was delayed by stress of weather;[[2]] and the Post-Office agent, when giving evidence on the subject in 1840, could not remember one instance of such delay throughout his whole service, extending over forty-five years.
[2]. The standing rule was that the Packets must put to sea immediately on receiving the mails, whatever the wind was, provided only that they could carry a double-reefed topsail—a striking proof of the certainty with which a good and well-found sailing vessel can clear the Channel from Falmouth.
If, however, Falmouth excelled in ease of access, the natural advantages of the harbour were still more evident when the ships had reached it. It is, in fact, the safest anchorage in the country, protected from the full strength of the Atlantic rollers by the great promontory of Meneage, and abounding in sheltered creeks where vessels might lie in practical immunity from the worst of storms.
On one of these creeks the town of Falmouth stands; and this inlet, the King’s or Inner Harbour, was assigned to the Packets as their special anchorage. It lies in such a situation that the swell entering the harbour is diverted from it by the high land of Pendennis, at the entrance of the port; and the advantage of this aspect is so great, that vessels may be seen lying in the Inner Harbour without perceptible motion, while just outside others are rolling gunwale under.
There is seldom any difficulty in leaving this sheltered anchorage. With a fair wind a vessel may be in the open sea in a quarter of an hour after slipping her moorings off Green Bank, opposite the town of Falmouth; and here the Packets used to lie until the day before sailing, when they warped out into Carrach Roads, and lay there to receive the mails, in order that not the slightest loss of time might occur in proceeding to sea when the bags were once on board.
At Falmouth then the Post-Office located itself in the year 1688, with two Packet boats hired from a contractor, one Daniel Gwin, who appears to have received a salary of £70 per annum, in addition, doubtless, to whatever he could make indirectly out of his contract. Probably his gains were considerable. At any rate the Government made none, for the accounts show from year to year a loss of several thousand pounds upon the maintenance of these two boats, from which, indeed, the revenue seems seldom to have received more than £450. Expensive as the Corunna Packets proved to be, it may be presumed that the promoters of the Service were not dissatisfied with it; for early in the new century they proceeded to develop it. The West Indian trade was becoming important enough to make its wishes felt. The merchants engaged in it may probably have represented that the regular communication now established with Corunna gave their colleagues in the Spanish trade more facilities than they enjoyed. All Governments have found it difficult to resist such an argument; and accordingly, in 1702, Packets were established at Falmouth to ply to Barbados, Jamaica, and certain places in the Southern States of North America. Two years later a Service with Lisbon was set up; and the Post-Office Service at Falmouth began to assume the form which it preserved until within the memory of men now living.
It is no part of the present writer’s purpose to trace in detail all the events which went to make up the history of the Packet Station at Falmouth during the last century. Such a task would doubtless throw much light on naval history, and some, perhaps, on other subjects not without their share of interest. The materials are scanty, however, and the record might be dreary reading. The personal recollections which would have lit the story up and made it real are lost beyond recall. What has come down to us is hardly more than the bald record of administrative changes—at such a time there were two West India Packets, at another four; under one regime they touched at Charlestown and Pensacola, while under its successor their voyages were restricted. There were such changes of rule in regard to victualling the sailors, such and such difficulties in controlling them; and so on. It is nothing but an arid waste of technicalities, almost devoid of interest save for the professed student of naval or commercial history.
One or two facts stand out from this mass of detail, and arrest attention as we pass it by. There is the occasional mention of a sea fight, in which so many men (in proportion to the number of the crew) were killed and wounded, as to create a strong desire to know the details.
Thus, an order of the Postmaster General, dated May 16th, 1744, recounts that a petition has been received from one Hannah Christophers, widow of Joseph Christophers, who lost his life on June 24th, 1740, on board the “Townshend” Packet, Captain John Cooper, in an engagement against the Spaniards, wherein five men (whose names are given) received “several grievous wounds in defence of the Packet, and afterwards suffered a long and cruel imprisonment of sixteen months.” By the rules and customs of His Majesty’s service, the order goes on to observe, these poor men are entitled to “some bounty or allowance for their comfort and support”; and the Postmaster General, having in mind this laudable usage, and moreover, “having in part experienced it will be impossible to carry on the sea service of this office without great difficulty, danger, and interruption, unless some such encouragement be constantly given in the like cases,” proceed to award bounties ranging from £4 to £10, and in one case even a pension of no less amount than £4 per annum!
We shall hear further of the “Townshend” Packet, for the mantle of Captain John Cooper descended on the commander of another “Townshend,” by whom some seventy years later a great action was fought against hopeless odds with such determined bravery as must be admitted to surpass any other recorded achievement of the Post-Office fleet.