Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ...are not prepared to recommend that Dartmouth should be selected for that service. "That they consider a western port most desirable for landing and embarking the mails to and from the West Indies, and that provided a railway existed to the southwest of Land's End, and a harbour was constructed in that neighbourhood where the mails might with facility be put on board and landed, they would unhesitatingly recommend that harbour to their lordship's adoption." They thought it "proper to premise, that in a selection of a western port for a station for the delivery and reception of the West Indian mails, in preference to one situated more to the eastward, they took into account the greater degree of uncertainty which is attached to the transport of mails by steam vessels compared with that in which a coach or railroad becomes the medium of conveyance; and as it respects the eastern port, it should be borne in mind that the correspondence to and from the western part of our shores would be subject to a carriage in both cases, by sea and land, very wide of their destination." The witnesses examined, and upon whose evidence the report of the Committee was largely based, were officers of high standing in Her Majesty's Navy and representatives of the Post Office, and both the Admiralty and the Post Office were in favour of retaining Falmouth as the Packet Station for the West India Mail Service. The Treasury, however, eventually yielded to the influence brought to bear upon it in favour of Southampton, and in September, 1843, the carrying Companies were permitted to embark and land mails at the latter port. In 1850 the mail service to Madeira and Brazil was also withdrawn, and Falmouth ceased altogether to be a Packet Station, ...
