The great difficulty with which the coaches had on this occasion to contend was not merely the getting along the roads, but, as with these extraordinary depths of snow the natural features of the country were mostly obscured, of keeping on or anywhere near the road. Hedgerows were blotted out of existence: many trees had fallen under their snowy burdens, and it was not unusual, when at last the snowed-up mails were recovered, to find them strayed far from their course, and in the middle of pastures and ploughlands.
Snowstorms produced curious travelling experiences. It was this great occasion that effectually blocked all the up night coaches for two days at Dunchurch, on the Holyhead Road, and so succeeded in bringing together a party not unlike those weatherbound travellers who in Dickens’ Christmas stories gather round the hearth, and, comforting themselves with many jorums of punch, tell dramatic stories. One party crowded the “Dun Cow,” another the “Green Man.” Among the coaches were the Manchester “Beehive” and the “Red Rover.” The first morning of their enforced leisure they—coachmen, guards and passengers—made up a poaching party, with two guns among sixteen of them. Jack Goodwin, guard of the “Beehive,” was the only fortunate sportsman, and shot a hare. In the evening a dancing party was held at the “Dun Cow” at the suggestion of the landlord, who invited some friends, and the next morning Goodwin turned wandering minstrel, taking with him a chosen few to help in chorus. Wandering along the Rugby Road, they were entertained at the farmhouses with elderberry wine and pork pies. Another pleasant evening, and they were off the next morning for London.
Floods were infinitely more dangerous than snowstorms, and the Great North Road, between Newark-on-Trent and Scarthing Moor, was particularly subject to them, the Trent often, and on the very slightest provocation of rain, flooding many miles of surrounding country. It was here, and on these occasions, that the outsides had the better bargain of the two classes of travelling, for they kept their seats without fear of being drowned, while the insides went in constant terror of a watery death, and often only escaped it by the pitiful expedient of standing on their seats and so—keeping the doubled-up attitude this necessity and the lowness of the roof imperatively demanded—remaining until the levels were passed and the dry uplands reached again.
WINTER: GOING NORTH. After H. Alken.
In August 1829, when extraordinary floods devastated a great part of Scotland, a stirring episode occurred in connection with them and the mail-coach running through Banff. The tradition that his Majesty’s mails were to be stopped for nobody and hindered by nothing on the road was a very fine and fearless one, but it was occasionally pushed to absurd lengths, and hideous dangers provoked without reasonable cause. This episode of the Banff and Inverness Mail is a case in point. The mail of the preceding day had found it impracticable to go by its usual route, and so took another course, by the Bridge of Alva. It was therefore supposed that the mail following would adopt the same plan; but what was the astonishment of the good folk of Banff when they perceived the coach arrive, within a few minutes of its usual time, at the farther end of the bridge that crosses the River Dovern. The people, watching the eddying floods from the safe vantage-point of their windows, strongly dissuaded the guard and coachman from attempting to pass, the danger being so great; but, scouting the idea of perils to be encountered in the very streets of the town, those foolhardy persons drove straight along the bridge and into a street that had been converted by the bursting of the river-bank into the semblance of a mountain torrent. When the furious current caught the coach, it was instantly dashed against the corner of Gillan’s Inn, and the four animals swept off their legs. They rose again, plunging and struggling for their lives, and a boat was pushed off, with men eager to free the poor animals from their harness, to enable them to swim away; but it was not possible to save more than one. The other three were drowned.
By this time the coach, with coachman and guard, had been flung upon the pavement, where the depth of water was less; and there the guard was seen, clinging to the top, and the coachman hanging by his hands from a lamp-post, regretting too late the official ardour and slavery to tradition that had wrought such havoc. When, for humanity’s sake, as well as to secure the mail-bags, a boat came and rescued them, they were not suffered to depart without much Aberdonian plain-speaking on the folly that had nearly cost them their lives and endangered the correspondence of the good folks of the ancient burgh of Banff.
MAIL-COACH IN A SNOW-DRIFT. After J. Pollard.
There were no passengers on this occasion, but we are not to suppose that, had there been any, they would have received much consideration. The mail would probably have been driven on, just the same. The official attitude of mind towards them may be judged from the wintry horrors encountered by the Edinburgh to Glasgow Mail in March 1827. It became embedded in the snow near Kirkliston, and the guard, riding one horse and leading another loaded with the bags, set off for Glasgow; while the coachman, with the other horses, set off in the opposite direction to secure a fresh team, pursued by the entreaties of the four terrified passengers, beseeching him to use all diligence and return soon. There, on a lonely road, immovably stuck in huge snowdrifts, they remained throughout a bitter night, made additionally miserable by one of the windows being broken. It was not until nine o’clock the next morning that the coachman returned, with another man, but only two horses. Having loaded them with some luggage and parcels, he was, with a joke upon his lips, leaving the passengers to shift for themselves, but was compelled to take one who had fallen ill. The remaining three extricated themselves as best they could.