The post office and its story

by Edward Bennett

But the catalogue is a long one of oversea contracts, and besides there is little variety in the nature of the service. There is an interesting table in the Post Office Guide showing the approximate time taken in the transmission of correspondence from London to certain places abroad. According to this list the longest journey for a letter now figures as 44 days, and that is to the Fiji Islands via Suez, but if you send it by Vancouver the journey is reduced to 30 days. The longest journey without an alternative route is to Hobart, 34 days, but Brisbane and Manila run it very close, 33 and 32 days respectively. Bombay is under 15 days and Cape Town is 17 days. We are practically within a month's touch on paper of the whole civilised world. We have travelled far since the 25th of December 1815, when Charles Lamb wrote to his friend Thomas Manning, who was in China: “Dear old friend and absentee, this is Christmas Day, 1815, with us: what it may be with you I don't know—the 12th of June next year, perhaps.” Lamb's idea was that in writing to a friend it was the day of the receipt of the letter that was the thing to be concerned about, and how difficult it was to be with your friend in imagination six months hence. When your friend was reading your words “all your opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age.” But thirty days is a different matter, and even our friends in New Zealand or the Fiji Islands seem only in the next street compared with similar conditions a hundred years ago.

At home we grumble at the Post Office, and are irritated at the delay of a single post, but if we are living abroad, or have friends and relations in distant countries, the very word “mail” has a sweet sound in our ear. If we spoke in rhythm, as people sometimes do when labouring under strong emotion, we should say of the Post Office in a foreign land or when parted from our friends, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings.” “The feet” may be a twin screw steamship, but the sight is none the less beautiful.

But besides the big foreign services there are a very large number of contracts for conveying mails in British waters. Indeed, to examine the list is to understand in the fullest meaning the term British Isles. When we use the term we think of Great Britain and Ireland, and we perhaps concede the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight to the group. But there are also the Scilly Islands, the Channel Islands, the Western Isles of Scotland including Skye and the Hebrides, the Arran Islands in Ireland, and the Orkney and Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland.

Chief in the Home Packet Service is perhaps the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown. In the old days Milford and Holyhead were both stations for the Irish mails, but Holyhead has always held the premier position, and now Fishguard has supplanted Milford. Here is a copy of an old advertisement published in 1810 in a Dublin newspaper. It will show how the service was performed in the days before steam navigation:—

“Notice is hereby given that the Postmasters-General are willing to receive Proposals for a Contract, for a period not exceeding seven years, for Two Stout Wherries of from forty-five to fifty tons burden for the performance of His Majesty's Express Services between Dublin and Holyhead.” This is one of the stormiest and most uncertain of channel passages, and the express services occupied anything from seven to twenty hours or longer in making the voyage. The Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, the fine vessels of the City of Dublin Steamship Company, have a speed of 23 knots an hour, and keep excellent time. The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's vessel, Ben-my-Chree, averages 24 knots at sea. There are fine services between Southampton and Weymouth and the Channel Islands, and services slow but sure to the western islands of Scotland and the distant Shetlands.

There is one British island at least which has no regular mail service, but occasionally improvises a curious service of its own. St. Kilda is a remote island lying off the west coast of Scotland about 50 miles from the nearest land. The scenery is wild and rugged, sheer cliffs rising from the sea in some parts to a height of 1250 feet, and covered by myriads of sea birds. There are about sixteen cottages on the island and eighty inhabitants. Two or three times a year during the summer a tourist steamer calls there, but the island is cut off from the mainland from August to May except for the occasional visit of an Aberdeen trawler. The islanders, left to their own resources, endeavour to open up communication with the mainland in this manner. They construct a sheepskin buoy, and the letters are enclosed in a tin canister with sufficient money to pay postage, and a wooden label is attached bearing the inscription: “St. Kilda mail. Please open.” The mail can only be launched with a hope of success in a gale of north-west wind, which drives it across to the island of Lewis, a distance of 60 miles. In a gale of this kind in 1905, the mail arrived on the shores of Lewis within two days. In the mail boat was found money to defray the cost of the postage. The dealer who sells in Glasgow and London the tweed woven by the St. Kilda islanders received half-a-dozen letters. They were salt with the lime of the sea, and in places scarcely legible. One of the islanders wrote: “Very few of the trawlers have visited us this year owing to the bad weather. I wish we could hear how you are all getting on on the mainland, and especially how the Churches are progressing.” The St. Kilda folk are keen theologians, and the struggle between the “United” and the “Wee Free” Churches interested them keenly. They were “Wee Frees” almost to a man.

The mail boat does not always reach its destination. Three were sent off on the same date, and two were never heard of again. The third was picked up at Dunrossness, in Shetland, after having drifted for two months and a day. But the letters, though sadly damaged by the sea, were duly posted at Lerwick.

There is, of course, great excitement in St. Kilda when a tourist steamer arrives. The resources of the little post office, which is only a bare room with a table and desk, are severely strained. The inward mail is never a heavy one, but the outgoing one on these occasions is quite imposing. All the tourists bring on shore postcards and letters to obtain the coveted St. Kilda postmark. The postmaster has a busy time, and the post office is open for quite an hour, an unusual event in the island.

There are still narrow seas in the British Isles where the sailing vessel holds the mail contract, just as there are still inland districts where the mail coach survives. Between the mainland of Shetland and Fair Isle, the mails are carried once a fortnight by sailing vessel, and there are similar services between Shetland and Foula, and between Mallaig and Knoydart on the west coast of Scotland.