but finally rejected by the East India Company.
Further contracts for mail service to China and Singapore.
Though the Hindostan proved vastly superior to the vessels of only 250 horse-power employed by the East India Company in the mail service between Bombay and Suez, which cost no less than 105,200l. per annum to maintain, the Court of Directors declined to listen to the further suggestions of the Home Government to transfer this branch of the postal service into the hands of any private undertaking and, indeed, retained it until 1854. In the meantime Government entered into another contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Company for a monthly service from Ceylon to Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong. For the service between Suez, Ceylon, Madras, and Calcutta, the company received 115,000l. per annum or at the rate of 20s. per mile, and, for the latter, 45,000l. per annum or about 12s. per mile.
When it became known that the Peninsular and Oriental Company had engaged to perform a service to India and the leading ports of China at the average rate of 17s. per mile in vessels of 500 horse-power, while the service between Suez and Bombay was costing upwards of 30s. per mile in vessels of not half that power, and, at the same time, of greatly inferior speed and accommodation, the public naturally demanded that the Bombay branch of the service should be placed in the hands of persons competent to carry it out more efficiently and economically than had been done by the East India Company.
Peninsular and Oriental Company undertake the line between Bombay and Suez, 1854.
But the Court of Directors successfully resisted all such demands until the Parliamentary Committee of 1851 reported that this service—in point of economy, the comfort of the passengers, and the requirements of trade—could be performed to greater advantage by private enterprise than by the vessels of the Indian navy. It is, however, questionable if the Directors would even then have given up the service had not the Bombay mails been, soon afterwards, lost in a native sailing-craft into which they had been transferred at Aden, the East India Company having no steamer ready to convey them thence to Suez. The Peninsular and Oriental Company having been applied to, then found that, by means of the arrangements they had entered into for the performance of the other services, they could undertake this particular branch for the sum of 24,700l. per annum, or at the rate of 6s. 2d. per mile, thereby effecting a saving of about 80,000l. as compared with the expense incurred in the far less efficient service of the Indian navy.
In the meantime Government had, on the 6th January, 1848, given notice to the company to terminate their contract between Southampton and Alexandria on the 18th January of the following year, and, soon afterwards, advertised for tenders for the execution of this service. But, the other tenders being less advantageous to the public than the terms on which the Peninsular and Oriental Company was willing to continue the service, a new contract was entered into, for three years, at 24,000l. per annum or at the rate of 6s. 9d. per mile.
House of Commons Committee on Australian mail service, 1849.
Eastern Steam Navigation Company and Peninsular and Oriental Company tender for it, but the Peninsular and Oriental succeed.
Meantime also, the increasing trade with Australia created demands for greater facilities of intercourse with the mother-country and more regularity in conveyance of the mails, so that the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1849 to inquire and report on the then existing system of mail communication with the East, was instructed also to consider the best mode of conveying the mails between India and our Australian colonies. In this Report, dated July 1851, these different services were divided into five distinct heads,[343] one of which, recommended the establishment of a line between Singapore and Sydney. In reply to the advertisements issued on the recommendation of the Committee, two tenders were delivered on the 26th February, 1852, one by the Peninsular and Oriental Company for the whole of the services (their contracts of 1844 and 1849 being about to expire) with the addition of a branch line between Bombay and Point de Galle, not named in the conditions, for the annual sum of 199,600l., to be reduced by 20,000l. per annum six months after the completion of the railway across the Isthmus of Suez; and the other, by the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, for a line once a month between England, Calcutta, and Hong Kong for the annual sum of 110,000l., or for 100,000l. should Trieste be substituted for Marseilles as the port of embarkation, and a further contract for the service between Singapore and Sydney on an annual subsidy of 166,000l. (which, however, was not mentioned in their tender), being 276,000l. for both services.