No time was lost in despatching the couriers to the south; but, at the best, between bad roads and no roads at all, there were great delays in delivering the mails to Charlestown. In the fall of 1763, a proposition was made to extend the West Indies service to the mainland, and to require the mail packet to visit Pensacola, fort St. Augustine and Charlestown, before returning to Falmouth.
The extended scheme, which was accepted in 1764, involved an entire reorganization of the postal service of the southern colonies. The colonies to the south of Virginia were separated from the colonies to the north and, with the Bahama Islands, were erected into a distinct postal division, with headquarters at Charlestown.[63]
A sufficient number of vessels were added to make a regular monthly service,[64] but in spite of this, the arrangements did not give satisfaction. The route was too long to make it possible to deliver the mails at Charlestown within a reasonable time. The postmasters general reported that letters for those parts often lay forty or fifty days in London before starting on their way.
It was then resolved to break up the connection between the mainland and the West Indies, and have a separate monthly service between Falmouth and Charlestown. To secure the greatest measure of advantage from this service a courier was sent off with the mails for Savannah and St. Augustine as soon as they arrived at Charlestown from England.[65]
There were thus, from 1764, three lines of sailing packets running between England and the North American colonies—one to New York, another to Charlestown, and a third to the West Indies. There was but one defect in these arrangements. They did not provide connections between the several systems except through the mother country.
A letter sent from New York to Charlestown or to the West Indies had to travel across to London and back again by the first outward packet to its destination. To connect the two systems on the mainland, a courier travelled from Charlestown northward to Suffolk, Virginia, where he met with the courier from New York.
In dealing with the means for establishing communication between the mainland and the West Indies, the treasury were called upon to consider a petition from the merchants who traded to Florida. The termination of the war was followed by the withdrawal of the troops which were stationed at Pensacola, the principal trading settlement in Florida, and the merchants feared the savages would plunder their goods, if succour could not be easily obtained from the sister provinces.
The first step taken to meet the difficulty was to run a small forty-five ton vessel from Jamaica to Pensacola and on to Charlestown. This was satisfactory as far as it went, but as it took eighty-three days to cover this route and return to Jamaica, this service had to be doubled before the people concerned were content.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Statutes of the United Kingdom, 9 Anne, c. 10.