V. POST OFFICE AND ADMIRALTY PACKETS.
From 1820 until 1837 the British Post Office carried the mails between Dover and Calais, on steamships which were built specially for the purpose ; and those Government steamers, being deemed the most reliable, they gradually absorbed all the ordinary passenger traffic, as well as conveying King's Messengers and Royal personages.
In 1834 a King's Messenger came down to Dover with re-lays of foaming steeds to fetch Sir Robert Peel from Rome to form an administration ; and there being no steamer or sailing packet ready on the instant, the Messenger at once embarked in an open sailing boat, making the journey in about three hours. It was mentioned, in Sir Robert Peel's Biography, that in his journey from Rome to London, in 1834, which occupied twelve days and twelve nights, he encountered as much difficulty as Constantine did in travelling from York to Rome 1,500 years earlier, with this exception, that on the Dover Passage Sir Robert enjoyed the up-to-date advantage of a well-fitted steam packet ; although from Dover to London he had to use one of the time-honoured stage-coaches, steam travelling on the water having preceded steam travelling on land by nearly a quarter of a century.
The Post Office, in 1837, transferred the Dover and Calais Mail service from their own vessels to the Admiralty, which department continued to carry mails and passengers on the Dover and Calais route for seventeen years. During that time great improvements were made in the speed and comfort of steam packets on the Passage. Captain Luke Smithett, a Dover man, who was afterwards knighted, was Commodore, under the Admiralty, of the Dover Packet service, and in those days the vessels that he personally commanded nearly always made the quickest passages. Amongst the steamers on the Passage, in 1846, the swiftest were the " Princess Alice," the " Onyx," and the " Violet." Captain Luke Smithett was very proud of the " Princess Alice," and did not believe that she could be beaten. When the " Onyx " came on the Passage, in 1846, a race was arranged between that vessel and the " Princess Alice," which had then been running two years. In a run of an hour and a half along the Kentish coast the " Onyx " proved swifter by nine minutes. The average time of the " Onyx " between Dover and Calais from 1846 to 1848 was one hour and twenty-five minutes.
There are ample facts given as to the Admiralty Packets, their speed and the mails carried, in the Admiralty Records, but the passengers are not mentioned. From the newspapers of that time, we have compiled the returns, which, compared with later years, are disappointing. In the summer of 1848, a steam packet carrying as many as thirty or forty passengers was considered uncommon. In July of that year it was mentioned as extraordinary that the cross-Channel packets were carrying nearly fifty passengers each voyage; but at that time the Dover and Calais route was at a very low ebb, owing to there being no railway to Paris from Calais, although there was one from Boulogne. In the week ended June 24th, 1848, 900 Continental passengers passed through Dover, being 500 on the Ostend route, 300 on the Boulogne route, and only 100 on the Calais route.
On the 2nd September, 1848, the Northern Railway of France was opened to Calais, and at the end of January, 1849, the Admiralty ceased running mail packets to Boulogne, after which date Calais resumed its old position as the principal port for English travellers. During that summer the Dover and Calais packets carried about fifty passengers each voyage, but in the summer of 1850 the average per voyage, reckoning twenty-eight voyages a week between Dover and Calais, was one hundred passengers each trip; in the winter of the same year the average was barely twenty. In the year 1851, when the great exhibition was held in London, the passenger traffic was greatly increased by arrivals, but there were fewer departures in the early summer; the incoming packets were crowded, averaging about two hundred passengers each voyage. It was in this year that packets began to embark and disembark passengers at the landings of the Admiralty Pier.
In 1850 a Parliamentary Committee considered the advisability of submitting the transit of the mails, on the Dover and Calais route, to tender. That Committee was informed that, after allowing for the receipts from passengers, the carriage of the mails between Dover and Calais cost ^6,244 per annum, and at that time the South Eastern Railway Company offered to carry the mails across for ^,^9,825. As it appeared that the acceptance of that tender would involve increased expenditure, no action was then taken. In 1854, however, tenders were again invited, and Mr. Joseph George Churchward's tender of ^^i 5,000 was accepted. Between the years 1850 and 1854 the cost of the mail packet service to the Admiralty had much increased, and it was said in Parliament that the contract would be an annual saving of ^10,000. This contract being entered into for the purpose of economy, it was not expected that there would be any great improvements in the service, but there were some. The time occupied by the voyages was slightly lessened, the fittings of the steamers were more adapted for the comfort of the passengers, and a railway connection having been made between the railway station and the Admiralty Pier landing stages, passengers could walk direct from the steamer to the railway train. These advantages poplarised the Passage, there being an average daily total of about 400 passengers. Up to this time the benefit of the passenger traffic had been chiefly felt by the hotel keepers and tradesmen who catered for them, the work of building and repairing steamers having been done by the Admiralty at the Dockyards; but Mr. Churchward, for keeping his fleet in repair, established the Dover Packet Yard near the docks, creating a new local industry, which has been perpetuated down to the present time.