THE ROYAL MAILS

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXI, Issue 2781, 28 November 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE ROYAL MAILS

EVOLUTION OF A WORLD-WIDE SERVICE.

GEORGE IV. TO GEORGE V.

Of all the countries of Europe, Portugal has been since very early days the steadiest ally of Great Britain. The alliance was more firmly cemented in 1662, when Charles 11. married the Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza, who brought with her a dowry which, as Samuel Pepys tells us, was, “ besides Tangier and a freetrade in the Indys, two millions of crownes—but they have brought but little money; but the rest in sugars and other commodities, and bills of exchange.” Trade between the two countries flourished and expanded, and was latterly largely augmented when the British drove the French out of Spain and Portugal during the Peninsular campaign. A London merchant, Arthur Anderson, born at Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, in 1792, was in partnership in the early years of the nineteenth century with a man named Willcox, and the firm of Willcox and Anderson carried on a regular trade between London, Oporto, Lisbon, and Gibraltar, by means of sailing ships. In 1832 Anderson, who had a fluent knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese, went to Portugal to assist the young Queen of that country against Don Miguel, the pretender to the throne, and largely through his instrumentality the funds necessary for the campaign were raised in England. The Queen’s party being successful in their efforts on‘her behalf, she was secured on her throne in 1883. As may be imagined, Anderson was in high favour at the Portuguese Court, and soon afterwards his company replaced their sailing ships by chartered Steamers, amongst which was the William Fawcett, built in 1829, their principal financial backers being Messrs Bourne, the largest shareholders of the recently formed City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, three of whose ships were chartered for the Peninsular service of Messrs Willcox and Anderson.

At this time the British Continental mails were carried in sailing _ brigs under the control of the Admiralty. An offer to carry the mails in their mtuch speedier and more reliable steamships was made by Messi’s Wilcox and Anderson, but was refused by the conservative authorities at the Admiralty. In a short time, however, the superior advantages offered by a steamship service could not be ignored, so negotiations were commenced, and. on August 22, 1837, the Peninsular Steam . Packet Service was formed, and a contract was entered into between the company and the British Government. Under this the company agreed to run a monthly steam packet service from Falmouth to Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Cadiz and Gibraltar, for an annual subsidy of £29,600, and this was the first foreign mail contract of the undertaking which in the course of nearly a century has developed into the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. Probably Commander Richard Bourne, who retired from the navy in December, 1840, had more to do with the establishment of the Peninsular Steam Packet Service than anyone else, as besides a knowledge of the Irish Packet Service which he was able to place at the disposal of the Admiralty, his son, John Bourne, an eminent engineer, writing in 1852, says, “The Peninsular Steam Packet Company was established by my father, the late Captain Bourne, who advanced more than half the capital pecessary for the establishment of the company himself, while the residue was chiefly contributed by his brothers and other members of his family.” The Peninsular service was so successful that in 1839 the company’s operations wdte extended to the Mediterranean, and to Alexandria, two much larger ships being employed. SERVICE TO INDIA. Then came the idea of a regular service to India by means of one line of steamers to Egypt, thence passengers and goods to be transported across the desert to Suez, there being then, of course, no Suez Canal, and from Suez to the different parts of India by a second line of steamships, at first under the control of the East India Company. The difficulties that had to be overcome to make this scheme a success were simply colossal. The journey from Alexandria across the desert was alone, in those days, an arduous undertaking. The first part, a distance of 48 miles, was by towing barge on the Mahmoudieh Canal, at a rate of about five miles an hour. Then came 120 miles on a Nile steamer to Cairo, which took 16 hours, and finally a journey of 90 miles across the desert to Suez, in a two wheeled omnibus holding four persons, and drawn by four mules or horses. This desert journey occupied, if all went well, 19 hours, but it must have been a severe trial in the hot weather in the days before ice and cool drinks were available, and it was impossible to get a bath even on arrival at Suez.

The charter incorporating the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company was dated December, 1840. The Hindoostan, a vessel of 1800 tons, and 520 horse power, was the pioneer vessel on the Indian adventure, and she left for Calcutta on September 24, 1842. THE HIRST TO AUSTRALIA.

The first P. and 0. steamer for Australia, with mails, was the Chusan, an iron barque rigged, screw steamer of 699 tons, with engines of 80 horse power. She was a beautiful model, looking more like a man-o’-war than a merchantman, and, as in those days the Eastern waters swarmed with pirates, she carried a long 32 pounder aft, an 18 pounder forward, and a 12 pounder amidships. Lieut. C. A. D. Pasco, R.N., son of Nelson’s flag lieutenant at the Battle of Trafalgar, the officer who hoisted the immortal signal, “England expects that every man will do his duty,” was a passenger on the Chusan to Melbourne, he having been given a free passage by the P. and O. directors in acknowledgment of his efforts in the direction of establishing a mail service to Australia, which he had first put before them in

1846. The Chusan left Southampton on May 15, 1852, and arrived in Sydned on August 3, a passage of 80 days, coaling eh route at St. Vincent and Capetown, and landing some of her mails and passengers at Melbourne. From this little vessel of 1852, with her 699 tons, her 80 horse power engines and her 32 pounder gun, to the magnificent new ships Strathnaver and Strathaird, the latest addition to the P. and O. fleet, is a far cry, and the contrast, more perhaps than anything else, conveys to one the enormous progress that has been made in the art of travelling with speed, comfort, safety and certainty, during the intervening 80 years. Forsaking the sombre coat of black which till now the vessels of the P. and O. fleet have worn, the Strathnaver, of 22,000 tons, over 31 times the size of the Chusan, appears in a dazzling coat of white as being more suitable for the tropics, and runs at an average speed of 22 knots. STABILITY AND COMFORT.

One of the last triumphs of engineering is the turbo-electric propulsion installed in these modern vessels, which, besides speed, has the very great advantage of reducing vibration to a minimum, one of the greatest boons to bad sailors, and a refinement of comfort which would have seemed uncanny in the days of the little Chusan. The tops of the three great oval funnels of the new ships are 109 feet from the water line, their longer diameter, 25 feet, being only two feet shorter than the beam of the Chusan. With nine decks, 12 watertight bulkheads, the new Punkah Louvre system of ventilation, which gives warm or cold air as desired, luminous and silent cabin bells, and all manner of other wonderful devices too numerous to enumerate, the new ships will be full of surprises. More than a century has passed since the launching, in 1829, of the William Fawcett, a paddle wheel steamship of 206 tons, and 60 horse power, afterwards engaged on that trade to Spain and Portugal which has developed slowly but surely into the greatest shipping combination in the world. The U. and C. Company’s house flag, the well known four triangles of blue, white, red and yellow, is said to trace its origin from the company’s early connection with the Peninsular, and to be made up from a combination of the blue and white and red and yellow of the Royal flags of Portugal and Spain. The Strathnaver is the newest link in this vast chain which connects the outlying parts of the Empire with the Motherland, of which we are forcibly reminded, when we read the motto of the company, “Quis separabit?”