Post Office Packet Service

However, Britain was at war almost continuously during the 18th and early 19th centuries with the result that packet ships did get involved in naval engagements with enemy warships and privateers, and were occasionally captured.

[1] This messenger service was far from reliable, so in the 1630s Thomas Witherings set about establishing a regular Dover-Calais packet service and entered into negotiations with Flemish and French postmasters-general to negotiate for effective cross-border carriage of letters for mutual benefit of the nations concerned (and the messengers were promptly dismissed).

[1] To begin with, letters to and from Holland went via France; but in 1668 a regular packet service was set up in addition to run between Harwich and Helvoetsluys.

The other two packet boats worked out of Deal, and provided a mail service for warships and merchant vessels anchored in the Downs.

[1] Routes ran at various times from Dover in Kent and Harwich in Essex to Calais, the Hook of Holland, Heligoland and Gothenburg.

There was also a route to the Isle of Man The stations from which the packet ships departed were: Dover, Harwich, Great Yarmouth, Falmouth, Plymouth, Milford Haven and Holyhead.

The locale of Falmouth in Cornwall was favourable to the successful transmission of mail through the gauntlet of enemy naval ships and privateers.

The value of the Falmouth Station grew as Napoleon implemented his Continental System, attempting to exclude British trade and communications with mainland Europe.

In punishment for the refusal to man ships, the Post Office moved the Falmouth Packet Station to Plymouth.

On 21 June 1798, the packet Princess Royal, under the command of Captain J. Skinner, was carrying mail to New York when she encountered a French privateer brig.

[10] Another particularly notable combat occurred on 1 October 1807 when the packet ship Windsor Castle resisted and then captured the more heavily armed French privateer Jeune Richard.

At the start of the War of 1812, Joshua Barney in the American privateer Rossie captured the mail packet Princess Amelia after a short but intense fight on 16 September 1812.

It replaced older packet vessels with naval ships made redundant by the peace that had followed the end of the Napoleonic wars.