The History of the Postmarks of the British Isles from 1840 to 1876 - John Hendy (1909)

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COLONIAL AND FOREIGN PACKET SERVICE. 63
accelerate the delivery of those mails throughout the United Kingdom. Officers engaged
in marine sorting duties were supplied with a stock of postage stamps to sell to
passengers on board.
The Postal officers on board ship were, like all other human beings, more or less
subject to sea-sickness ; but in crossing the Atlantic there were frequently whole days
when even a man well accustomed to the sea and not troubled with sickness could not,
because of the roughness of the storm, perform any such work as sorting letters or
making up mails. Mal-de-mer, however, was not by any means their only suffering.
Upon one occasion it became absolutely necessary to suspend sorting operations on
board the West Indian Packets, owing to a serious outbreak of yellow fever at
St. Thomas. Two of the sorting officers died, and nearly all of them felt the effects of
the fever. The wreck of a mail packet is happily to-day a rare event, but in the early
sixties such was not the case. In February, i860, the Canadian mail packet Hungarian
was wrecked off Cape Sable, Prince Edward Island, when all on board the vessel were
drowned, among them being Mr. G. Nash, the post officer employed in sorting the
mails. During the year 1862 five mail packets were totally lost ;
the Karmak (Cunard)
while entering the harbour of Nassau, Bahamas ; the Lima (Pacific S. N. Company) on
a reef off Legarto Island in the South Pacific Ocean ; the Cleopatra (African SS. Company)
on Shebar reef, near Sierra Leone ; the Avon (Royal Mail Steam Packet Company)
at her moorings in the harbour of Colon, New Granada ; and the Colombo
(P. and O. S. N. Company) on Minicoy Island, four hundred miles west of Ceylon. In
no case was there any considerable loss of correspondence, but several bags of mails
sank with the Colombo. By the employment of divers the greater portion of the submerged
mails were recovered, and, after a careful process of drying, it was found
practicable to forward most of the letters in a tolerably good condition to their
destinations. The letter from which Fig. 374 is taken is in excellent preservation
considering that it is stated to have been three months under water.
, Save
the
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Cojom"bo
Fig. 374.
The sorting of mails on board packets was abolished in 1872.
Up to 1874 all foreign rates of postage had to be settled by a separate treaty, or
convention, with each State. In nearly every case the prepayment of postage was left
to the option of the sender. By such an arrangement much additional work was thrown
upon the Packet Offices by their having to use various classes and values of marks on '
unpaid, partly paid, and fully paid letters, denoting the amount claimed by the country
from which they were sent. As, for instance, at Liverpool, " 19 cents" or "3 cents"
(Figs. 375, 376), according to whether the letter was transmitted by British or United
States Packet. Such charges we are told were, nevertheless, marked upon letters with
extraordinary accuracy.
3.
19 r'^'^^ S4^
CfNt^ ^Cti^ ce'S',
Fig. .S-5. Fig. 376. Fig. 377.