Chapter XI: Packet Ships and Brigs

As far back as the reign of Elizabeth a State post-office was instituted for foreign letters, for the reason that the merchants now required it. Owing to England’s geographical position, this, of course, connoted the employment of sailing ships. By 1635 the weekly continental service was doubled and accelerated. This arrangement improved during the seventeenth century, and there were packet stations at Dover for France, Harwich and Yarmouth for Holland and Hamburg, and at Holyhead and Milford for Ireland.

But it was Falmouth which became the headquarters for the post-office packet service as far back as 1688. The reason for this is obvious when you consider its location in regard to the Bay of Biscay, and the facility with which even those unhandy sailing craft could come in and out in all weathers and practically all winds. A very safe harbour, with plenty of room and water, right at the western end of the English Channel and easy of access, it was ideal for the departure of travellers and mails for Spain and the West Indies. The result was that, as the service became more numerous, shipyards were created in Falmouth, inns were built for the travellers, and a seafaring population grew up.

The North Sea packets were of about sixty tons, but the Falmouth packets were of 200 tons and heavily armed. They were not owned by the post-office, but hired by private contract, as the East India Company used to charter their ships. In fact, never did the post-office own the ships, although the officers and men were its servants, and not the contractor’s. The Falmouth packet service began in a quiet way in 1688 with the hiring of two craft, and for years it was run at a loss. But there were political reasons for keeping up connection with Spain, and during the eighteenth century both the Spanish and West Indian trades became important; and even by 1702 packet ships from Falmouth were running to Barbados, Jamaica, the southern States of North America, to Corunna in Spain, and in 1704 also to Lisbon. It was a separate method of causing to grow up a body of fine seamen; it was one of the best schools for encouraging navigation, which was still in a most crude position; and generally it was one of the great influences towards building up the Mercantile Marine. It was not until Cromwell’s time that any real naval fighting service as distinct from the Merchant Navy had come into being, and right up to the Napoleonic Wars the two services were closely allied and practically interchangeable. We have to remember also that merchantmen and packet ships had to fight enemy warships whenever required. Of a peaceful voyage there was hardly such a thing.

Such incidents as that of May 16, 1744, when the _Townshend_ packet fought against the Spaniards; or of July 25, 1759, when the packet _Fawkener_ was attacked by a large French sloop between Barbados and Antigua, are by no means isolated. Indeed, although they were forbidden to seek engagements and were reminded that their first duty was the safety of the mails, yet if they saw a chance of obtaining wealth at sea by attacking a likely ship, they did so in spite of any authority. These men were, like the age in which they lived, a hardy, rough, corrupt lot of dare-devils.

They carried cargoes of their own, contrary to regulations; they stole, they smuggled, they mutinied—but we cannot go through the whole decalogue. On the other hand, they were real sailormen, and the rule that a packet was to put to sea from Falmouth immediately on receiving the mails, whatever the wind might be, provided only she could carry a double-reefed topsail, was maintained. The regularity of their voyages was the nearest thing to the running of a modern steamship. In 1798 there were sixteen packet ships to keep up the Falmouth to West Indies service, and “on the quiet” captains, officers and crews would take out quantities of cheese, potatoes, boots, shoes and so on, sell them on commission for English merchants, and then bring back such goods as wines, lace, tobacco, brandy, which would be smuggled ashore and then sold all over the country by special men. This went on until 1810, when the Lisbon and West Indian packets were strictly forbidden to carry on these trades. The order brought the crews up with a round turn, and a terrible moan went about in disgust. Their wages were certainly too low, and this was the means of remunerating themselves. Anger and indignation finally culminated in a mutiny.

And yet the captains used to make no meagre living, even reckoned in the money of the nineteenth century. They were paid £8 a month during war-time and £5 in peace; but besides this they received large sums in respect of the fares of passengers. One captain alone was making £1000 a year by this means, and then there were the fees for carrying bullion, to say nothing of their commission for selling goods, both exports and imports. For instance, they were paid thirty-five guineas by every passenger who proceeded from Falmouth to Gibraltar. By the year 1808 there were thirty-nine packets at Falmouth—quite a fine fleet for any one port in those days. Every week one sailed for Lisbon, one for San Sebastian or other part of the north Spanish coast, whence communication with the British Army in the Peninsula was maintained. Each week, too, one packet sailed for the West Indies, whilst others at longer intervals set forth towards the Mediterranean, Brazil, Surinam, Halifax and New York. People were beginning to travel, and between 2000 and 3000 passengers thus passed through Falmouth to and from these ships yearly. It was a very encouraging factor for the Mercantile Marine, especially as the Falmouth packets alone kept 1200 men permanently employed afloat.

Contemporary artists of the early nineteenth century have left for us paintings showing some of the North Sea packet ships. Turner’s well-known picture in the National Gallery of the English packet arriving in Calais in 1803 is an instance. These craft were never bigger than about eighty tons, and during the French wars ran for a time between Yarmouth and Hellevoetsluis in Holland. But a West Indian packet such as the _Duke of Marlborough_ with her 1804 tons and brig-rigged, was a very different sort of ship. And in the very year when Commodore Dance put Admiral Linois to flight, this packet ship, whilst bound for the Leeward Islands, was in the month of April chased by a schooner and captured.

Of the “Windsor Castle” packet. About 1808.

CAPTAIN JOSEPH HUDDART, F.R.S.,

Who served in the H.E. India Company’s service for ten years. He lived 1741-1816, and was a celebrated hydrographer.

(_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._)]

As mentioned in the last chapter, the famous American packets which ran from New York to Liverpool, came out in 1816. This famous Black Ball Line was for years the pioneer, and began with five 400-ton ships. During the first ten years these vessels averaged twenty-three days on the eastward and forty-three days on the westward voyage, the fastest eastward being the passage of _Canada_ in fifteen days eighteen hours. These ships were flush-decked. Between the foremast and mainmast was the galley, and in the long-boat were carried the sheep and pigs and fowls for the ship’s food. A cow was also carried in a house over the main hatch, and the passengers’ cabins were aft.

These liners carried a black ball painted on the foresail and were commanded by real hard-case captains who had caused much anxiety to British shipping whilst in command of privateers during the war of 1812. In these ships passengers, mails and bullion were conveyed, two vessels leaving each month. In 1821 two more lines were started, one of which was the Red Star Line of packets to Liverpool. After the Dramatic Line was founded in 1836 the packet ships gradually increased to about 1000 tons, and the competition had become keener, packets now running from North America to Liverpool, Havre and London. Captain A. H. Clark, in his interesting volume The _Clipper Ship Era_, states that all packet ships carried a white light at the bowsprit cap from sunset to sunrise; but of course side-lights had not yet come in. It is interesting to remark in this connection that probably the first institution of side-lights was in 1834, for from January 1 the City of Dublin Steam Company began to use a white light at the foremast head, a red on the larboard bow and a white on the starboard bow, the two latter being attached to the houses forward of the paddleboxes. Then for a few years there was a diversity in practice, each company doing what it thought best in this respect to minimise risk of collision at sea.

Up to 1846 the system in use by the British packet ships of Liverpool was to have a white light under the cross-trees below the foot of the foresail, with a red light on the port paddlebox and a white light on the starboard paddlebox, but apparently the Milford steam packets carried a red light on the starboard bow, a green light on the port bow and a “common light” (presumably white) at the foremast head. It is claimed that this was also the fashion adopted by the P. & O. Company. In 1846 the Royal Mail Steam Company’s ships carried masthead and bow lights, but colourless. The subject is a little difficult to elucidate, but it is certain that there were in existence different usages as late as this date, and it was not until at least two years later that any sort of uniformity came in. It has been stated by another authority that it was only as a result of the collision between the Collins liner _Arctic_ and the French ship _Vesta_ on September 21, 1854, when the former foundered with the loss of 323 lives out of 368, that the carrying of side-lights was made compulsory and not optional.

Even in the American packets most of the crew were British, and often enough gaol-birds of the worst type, but the captains were pretty tough and accustomed to handling men as well as ships, and the mates were of the same order. These ships could reel off their twelve knots pretty regularly, and sometimes did the voyage in sixteen days. With their high-steeved bowsprits, their black hulls and square painted ports, and carrying plenty of canvas, even to skysails and stuns’ls in summer weather, they used to race against each other, sometimes even for very high stakes. For quite a long time the Atlantic packet ships were able to laugh at the steamships, but gradually from 1840 the progress of the marine engineer and shipbuilder wore down the competition. Regularity and reliability of running with increased comfort were bound to have their influence on the carrying of mails, passengers and merchandise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his _English Traits_ has left on record an account of his passage across the Atlantic from Boston in 1847 aboard the packet ship _Washington Irving_. She was of 750 tons register, the mainmast measured 115 feet from deck to truck, and the length of the ship from stem to stern on deck was 155 feet. “The shortest sea-line,” he goes on to remark, “from Boston to Liverpool is 2850 miles. This a steamer keeps, saving 150 miles. A sailing ship can never go in a shorter line than 3000, and usually it is much longer. Our good master keeps his kites up to the last moment, studding sails alow and aloft, and by incessant straight steering never loses a rod of way.... Since the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept but in his day-clothes whilst on board.... Hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat is greater; but the speed is safety, or twelve days of danger instead of twenty-four.”

In one week the _Washington Irving_ made 1467 miles, but to Emerson, as to most passengers in those days, this form of travel was anything but pleasant. “I find the sea-life an acquired taste,” he sums up rather sadly, “like that for tomatoes and olives. The confinement, cold, motion, noise and odour are not to be dispensed with. The floor of your room is sloped at an angle of twenty or thirty degrees, and I waked every morning with the belief that someone was tipping up my berth. Nobody likes being treated ignominiously, upset, shoved against the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitis and stewing oil. We get used to these annoyances at last, but the dread of the sea remains longer.... Such discomfort and such danger as the narratives of the captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the costly fee we pay for entrance to Europe; but the wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.” Emerson found the worst inconvenience was the lack of light in the cabin, but the fifteen days from the time they left soundings were to him long, joyless and severe.

The American poet James Russell Lowell has left us a character sketch of a chief mate whom he describes as “not an American, but I should never have guessed it by his speech, which was the purest Cape Cod, and I reckon myself a good taster of dialects.... He used to walk the deck with his hands in his pockets, in seeming abstraction, but nothing escaped his eye.... He is as impervious to cold as the polar bear. On the Atlantic, if the wind blew a gale from the north-east, and it was cold as an English summer, he was sure to turn out in a calico shirt and trousers, his furzy brown chest half bare, and slippers without stockings. But ... he comes out in a monstrous pea-jacket here in the Mediterranean when the evening is so hot that Adam would have been glad to leave off his fig-leaves.... He ... always combs his hair, and works himself into a black frock-coat (on Sundays he adds a waistcoat) before he comes to meals, sacrificing himself nobly and painfully to the social proprieties. The second mate, on the other hand, who eats after us, enjoys the privilege of shirt-sleeves, and is, I think, the happier man of the two.”

But besides the shipping engaged in the East Indian, West Indian, American, Spanish, Mediterranean and North Sea routes, the Mercantile Marine was being built up by the fishermen and coasters, and we should be providing an inaccurate picture if we did not consider them. In an earlier chapter we saw how important were the fishing fleets down to the end of the seventeenth century, and what a backbone they have always been to the navies and Mercantile Marine. In 1704 Queen Anne reorganised the various laws relating to the herring fishery and permitted the use of all harbours and shores for landing fish on payment of reasonable dues. A certain number of foreigners were being employed by the British to help with the fishing, but in 1747 the Dutch still had 3000 herring vessels and were employing 40,000 fishermen. This was a great falling off since 1679, but still it was a considerable industry, and bringing in £5,000,000. Not without reason these Hollanders called their herring fisheries their gold mine, and in the mid-eighteenth century they were employing over 1000 Englishmen in their craft. Thus each nation learned a good deal of each other’s methods, and this standardisation has continued to this day.

Somehow the English fishery companies continued to be unsuccessful, for in October of 1750 one more was incorporated, but the craft and gear were purchased at expensive rates, more fish were obtained than could be sold, and thus the company failed. But it was not merely the Dutch who were rivalling the English and Scottish fishermen. During the latter half of the century the Swedes and the Danes were very active. In fact, British men-of-war had to be requested to afford protection against the encroachments of foreigners. The British fishing craft were often badly built, of ill design and not well-found, but legislation was introduced to assist them. In 1771 a bounty of thirty shillings a ton for seven years was granted to all decked vessels of from twenty to eighty tons, provided they were of British origin and ownership and engaged in the herring fishery. These craft were to meet for fishing at Yarmouth, Leith, Inverness, Bressay Sound, Kirkwall, Oban, Campbelltown and Whitehaven. But it is rather curious that the Scottish fishing was abandoned to foreigners, who brought in the catches, and then the fish were exported to the British West Indies as food for slaves; but from 1809 the Scottish fishing began to prosper once more. During the nineteenth century the rights of the European States over their territorial waters were defined, for the constant quarrels between the French and British fishermen as to where they could dredge for oysters off the coast were somewhat of a nuisance.

It is since the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 that all fishing vessels have been compelled to be registered and licensed, and then in 1886 was instituted a Fishery Department in the Board of Trade. The twentieth century has been notable for the way steam and motors have gradually begun to take the place of sailing craft. The steam drifters are able to follow the herring down the coast, but the big steam trawlers are the principal fishing craft in the British Isles to-day. During the war most of the British steam fishing craft were taken up by the Admiralty for mine-sweeping or anti-submarine work, but by the year 1921 the national fishing had recovered so much that the total landings amounted to over £16,000,000. It is from the North Sea trawlers that most of the fish still comes, and of this a considerable quantity is caught by the trawlers from Hull and Grimsby. One unfortunate result of the war has been the loss of the Russian and much of the German trade; for in 1913 the United Kingdom exported £5,500,000 worth of cured and salted herring, of which Russia and Germany together took 80 per cent. To-day from Hull alone there are about 250 steam trawlers fishing and employing about 3000 hands aboard. If you add to this the number of steam, motor and sailing fishing craft from the other ports, it is at once obvious that these fleets form a very considerable portion of the Mercantile Marine.

We may take Hull as representative of modern fishing, but it is only as the result of centuries of experience. Certainly as far back as 1535 the quantity of fish there landed was considered so important as to require an Act of Parliament to regulate the trade. Perhaps the least known was the very important Hull whaling trade, which was carried on for two and a half centuries until about 1868, when, owing to the scarcity of whales, the industry died out, the last whaling voyage being made by the _Truelove_, which had been built in Philadelphia 104 years previously. This vessel made seventy-two whaling voyages, during which she took about 500 whales, and besides these activities filled in the time by general trading, in the Oporto wine trade, and even as a “Letter of Marque.” Other whalers also went to the Arctic from Whitby, Scarborough and London. You may guess how important was the industry when we state that in the year 1821 no fewer than sixty-one whalers left Hull, thirty-two for the area between Greenland and Spitzbergen, and twenty-nine for the Davis Straits.

But there was still another school for seamanship, and it was one of the most important sections of the Mercantile Marine, for two reasons: it not merely trained some of our finest officers and men, but it was until late in the nineteenth century a wonderful fleet of coasters, which passed away only at the coming of the steam collier. We refer to those brigs which used to bring coal from the Tyne to the Thames. These little two-masted vessels were manned by crews who were paid by the voyage. The result was that they were interested in making a quick passage. A contemporary writer, who was himself a privateer for a time, regarded these collier crews as the most perfect in working their ships in narrow channels, as the East Indiamen were the finest in the open seas.

This was in the eighteenth century, but from the time of the Stuarts these _Geordie_ brigs had been plying their trade and building up a fine body of seamen who formed a kind of pool from which ocean-going ships could obtain officers and crews for bolder enterprises. In this branch of the Mercantile Marine the famous discoverer, Captain Cook, learnt his seamanship, which was to lead to such important events. You may remember that whilst still in his teens he became apprenticed for three years in 1746 to the Whitby owners of the 450-ton vessel which carried coal from Newcastle to London, and after two years he served for a time in the 600-ton collier _Three Brothers_. He then served aboard her in the Norwegian and Baltic trades. In the seventeenth century these “coal cats,” as they were called, were sometimes three-masted vessels with square mainsail, square foresail, lateen mizzen, and sometimes a main topsail, but of course no triangular headsails, which did not come in until later.

Captain H. Y. Moffat, who was born in 1844 and served as a boy in the collier-brig _Premium_, has published some interesting facts illustrating this kind of seafaring. His pay was £8—not a week, nor a month, but a year. The second year he was to have £10, and the third year £12. Each of these brigs carried a couple of boys, though the rest of the crew were still paid by the voyage. They lived in a dirty, dark, small fo’c’sle, and during the summer the brig would often run coals across to Hamburg and Rotterdam, but in the winter to London from South Shields. If the surroundings were hardly ideal for a boy, and the pay utterly inadequate, it was a splendid chance for him to learn his seamanship in a rough school. If the brig had a head wind anywhere between Yarmouth and London—that is to say, among all those shoals, these lads were kept busy heaving the lead all the time night and day; for in those times there were no gas-buoys.

As to the men, they knew their job perfectly, but they could neither read nor write. They went aboard the ship with their marlin-spike, pricker, palm, rubber, sail-hook, needles, etc., and even with a well-scrubbed handspike for the windlass. Many of the modern, dry-nursed steamship seamen, better educated and better fed though they are, would have no right to be reckoned in the same category of efficiency as these rough mariners, who still used the old-fashioned hour and half-hour sand-glasses in their brigs. It was one of the most glorious sights to see a fleet of these colliers beating up the Thames. A waterman was always employed to assist each brig working up the river, and he would come aboard anywhere between Woolwich and Greenwich. If they were beating up with the flood tide, there might be fifty or a hundred brigs all of a bunch, and it would often happen that a brig could not fore reach because of the colliers just ahead. The waterman would therefore put the helm down, let her come up into the wind, and shake, but not so long as to lose way. This was known as a “waterman’s nip,” and with great care he could make the brig take as long to reach from one side of the river to the other as would allow the crew time to eat their dinner. The collier crews were the smartest men afloat for breaking out the anchor, for the reason that in working their way in and out of so many narrow channels they frequently had to bring up. It was always said that whenever an ex-collier’s crew shipped aboard another vessel the windlass required only half the men to work it.

Thus, everywhere the mariner in his own particular sphere was an expert at his job, and though he could never suspect it, he was making history, helping on the development and civilisation of the world. It was a lawless, irreligious, even blasphemous age in which he lived, and it is easy enough to criticise him for his wild excesses. But, having regard to the morals of the time, his poor pay, the disgraceful conditions of service, and the hard life which he was compelled to endure, is it to be wondered at that when he came ashore he was dragged into debauchery? The responsibility rests largely on those who enriched themselves by his bravery, his seamanlike skill and devotion to duty. There is not one of us to-day who is not a debtor to these old-time mariners for what they have done on our behalf, no matter what their ship.