Page:The empire and the century.djvu/342

 wet all through.' A new type of fighting packet was approved.

The instructions to captains of the new vessels were to run while they could, fight when they could no longer run, and throw the mails overboard when fighting would no longer avail. In 1698 such a ship was described as 'of eighty-five tons and fourteen guns, with a crew of twenty-one, and with powder, shot, and firearms, and all other munitions of war.' This was near the end of the seventeenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, a mail-packet on the Falmouth station, reckoned fit to proceed to any part of the world, was of about 179 tons burthen, with a crew all told of twenty-eight persons, and six four-pounder guns. The victualling was at the rate of 10d. per man daily, and the annual charge for the packet was £2,112 6s. 8d.

To-day a mail-packet is of perhaps 10,000 tons, with a crew of 500 men, and covers some 400 miles in twenty-four hours. And turbine-steamships are expected to develop a speed of 1,000 miles in the same period. One has already crossed the Atlantic in less than four and a quarter days.

In 1654 packets were appointed to ply weekly between Dublin and Chester (the postage being 6d.), and between Milford and Waterford; but these services were soon withdrawn, and not re-established till 150 years later. In 1662 the line of packets between Port Patrick and Donaghadee was established.

In 1690 there were eleven packet-boats—namely, two to France (not running, owing to the war), two to Flanders, two to Holland, two for the Downs, and three to Ireland. At that time Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Frankland were joint Postmasters-General; the former (according to the late Mr. F. J. Scudamore) controlling inland, and the latter packet business. The following observation in one of their official letters gives proof of their sagacity:

'We have indeed found by experience that where we