The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

In winter, therefore, it was still necessary to send the mails from Canada for England by way of New York. The mails between Nova Scotia and England during the winter months were exchanged by means of a schooner, which the governor of Nova Scotia put on the course between Halifax and New York.

In the winter of 1790, the conditions were made somewhat easier for the Nova Scotians, by the British post office directing that the packet agent at New York should send the Nova Scotia mails from New York to Boston, so that the governor's schooner was not required to go further south than Boston.

To Canada, the calling of the packet at Halifax, was a great boon. It settled the seaport problem, which had many perplexing aspects. Canada could never dispense with the New York route, unless the charges for transmission through the United States were made quite extortionate, and the success which had attended the efforts of Canada to make an outlet through British territory would not be lost upon the Americans when it became necessary to re-arrange the terms for transit through the United States.

To merchants and others in Quebec who depended exclusively on the Halifax post office for their correspondence with England, the service of the packet boats, curiously enough, developed a grievance, which had a real foundation, as will be seen from the following case.

The postmaster of Halifax reported to the postmaster general that the admiral of the "Leander," which was on the point of sailing for England, expressed much dissatisfaction because a mail was not sent by his ship.[139] In explanation of his refusal to do this the postmaster stated that before the packet boats began to call at Halifax, he made up and despatched a mail by every ship of war and merchantman that sailed from Halifax for England, but since the commencement of the packet service, he despatched no mails by any other vessels than the packets.

The understanding of the arrangement by the postmaster was that the packet boats would not have been sent to Halifax if they were not to be employed exclusively, and he would no more think of sending a mail by any other steamer than he would send the letters to Annapolis by the first traveller who happened to be going in that direction. The explanation was acceptable to both the post office and the admiralty, but there can be no question that the employment of the packet boats curtailed the opportunities which the Nova Scotians had enjoyed of corresponding with England.

Before leaving the Quebec-Halifax service, it seems proper to mention a remarkable scheme which was submitted to the postmaster general by William Knox, late under secretary of state, for a packet service between England and North America, and between the several parts of the latter.[140] Knox was under secretary of state during the war, and had in a large measure directed the operations of the packet service on behalf of the army in America.

The proposition, which was the result of a request by Lord Walsingham, the postmaster general, for an expression of Knox's views, was based on the sound principle that, until the post office provided facilities adequate to the requirements of the correspondence which passed between England and North America, it could never compete successfully with the number of private ships continually crossing the Atlantic.

Knox pointed out that there was only a monthly service between England, Halifax and New York, and that, at the very best, five months must elapse before an answer could be returned to a letter written in England and addressed to any of the interior parts of British North America.

The plan Knox unfolded to Walsingham was to have a fleet of fast sailing vessels ply between England and Caplin bay, Newfoundland. At Caplin bay there would be other vessels awaiting the British packets, and, on their arrival, one of these would set off with the mails for Halifax and Rhode Island, and another for Bermuda and Virginia, each vessel returning by its own route, to Caplin bay. These services were to be looped together by auxiliary services, and connected with other lines further south, until Great Britain, Newfoundland, Canada, the United States and the West Indies were all bound together by an elaborate system of intercommunication, which would give an exchange of mails, between all the parts three times a month. This scheme, it is needless to say, was never carried into execution.