Definition of a Packet Ship
Princeton packet ship (1848).
Packet ships, packet liners, or simply packets, were sailing ships of the early 1800s that did something which was novel at the time: they departed from port on a regular schedule.
The typical packet sailed between American and British ports, and the ships themselves were designed for the North Atlantic, where storms and rough seas were common.
The first of the packet lines was the Black Ball Line, which began sailing between New York City and Liverpool in 1818. The line originally had four ships, and it advertised that one of its ships would leave New York on the first of each month. The regularity of the schedule was an innovation at the time.
Within a few years several other companies followed the example of the Black Ball Line, and the North Atlantic was being crossed by ships that regularly battled the elements while remaining close to schedule.
The packets, unlike the later and more glamorous clippers, were not designed for speed. They carried cargo and passengers, and for several decades packets were the most efficient way to cross the Atlantic.
The use of the word “packet” to denote a ship began as early as the 16th century, when mail referred to as “the packette” was carried on ships between England and Ireland.
The sail packets were eventually replaced by steamships, and the phrase “steam packet” became common in the mid-1800s.
Packet boats were medium-sized boats designed for domestic mail, passenger, and freight transportation in European countries and in North American rivers and canals, some of them steam driven. They were used extensively during the 18th and 19th centuries and featured regularly scheduled service. Steam driven packets were used extensively in the United States in the 19th century on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, supplying and bringing personnel to forts and trading posts.
Packet ships were put into use in the 18th century on the Atlantic Ocean between Great Britain and its colonies, where the services were called the packet trade.
History
Packet craft were used extensively in European coastal mail services since the 17th century, and gradually added cramped passenger accommodation. Passenger accommodations were minimal: transportation, “firing” (i.e. a place to cook), drinking water (often tasting of indigo or tobacco, which the water casks had previously held), and a place to sleep.
Later, scheduled services were offered, but the time journeys took depended much on the weather.
In 1724, Daniel Defoe wrote about them in his novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. In the mid-18th century England, the King maintained a weekly packet service with the continent and Ireland using 15 packet vessels. Their importance is evident from the fact that the first craft built in the colony of New South Wales (in 1789) was the Rose Hill Packet.
Over the two centuries of the sailing packet craft development, they came in various rig configurations which included: schooners, schooners-brigs, sloops, cutters, brigs, brigantines, luggers, feluccas, galleys, xebecs, barques and their ultimate development in the clipper ships. Earlier they were also known as dispatch boats, but the service was also provided by privateers during time of war, and on occasion chartered private yachts. News of “record passages” was eagerly awaited by the public, and the craft’s captain and crew were often celebrated in the press. Behind this search for sailing faster than the wind, however, lay the foundations for a development in naval architecture and its science which would serve until the appearance of the steam vessels.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, the packet boat Marshall carried the body of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson from Lynchburg to his home in Lexington, Virginia, for burial.
Atlantic packet ships
Packets were the predecessors of the twentieth-century ocean liner and were the first to sail between American and European ports on regular schedules. The first company, the Black Ball Line (later the “Old Line”) began operating 1 January 1818, offering a monthly service between New York and Liverpool with four ships. In 1821, Byrnes, Grimble & Co. inaugurated the Red Star Line of Liverpool Packets, with the four ships Panther, Hercules, Manhattan and Meteor. In 1822, Messrs Fish, Grinnell, & Co. began the Swallowtail Line, known as the “Fourth Line of Packets for New York,” their first ships being the Silas Richards, Napoleon, George, and York, which soon moved to bi-weekly service. By 1825, vessels were advertised as leaving New York on the 8th and leaving Liverpool on the 24th of every month. Their actual schedules eventually varied, sometimes wildly, due to weather and other conditions.
Receiving information as quickly as possible—whether regarding particulars about trade, foreign markets, decision-making, professional partnerships, business documents, legal contracts, personal letters and political, government and military news—was of urgent importance to 19th century commerce. Industry and business made special arrangements to beat their competitors so that sailing ships, especially packet ships involved in the packet trade, emerged as the central information superhighway of the era, and for the development of journalism as well.
For instance, in late January 1840, the American Packet ship Patrick Henry arrived ahead of schedule and beat the competition to deliver the news from the continent for eager American readers. The Morning Herald (New York), 1 February, on the front page, reported: “The foreign news given today is highly important. Yesterday afternoon, about half past three, we received it at this office being a full hour before any of the Wall street papers had theirs— and by five o’clock we issued an Extra, to gratify the immense crowd that surrounded our office. One of our clippers left town at 10 o’clock, and boarded the Patrick Henry outside the bar at about one o’clock.”
View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, where Patrick Henry (packet) docked
The news was advertised as “Ten Days Later From England—Highly Important” and included articles about war preparations by Russia, Queen Victoria‘s marriage that month, meetings of Parliament and the French Chamber, and the French King’s speech.
“By the arrival of the Patrick Henry, Captain Delano, we have received immense files of English papers and periodicals, due to the 25th London, 26th from Liverpool and 23rd from Paris…Neither the Cambridge nor the Independence had arrived out on the 26th of Dec. The Patrick Henry had a fine run of nine days to the longitude of 38, where she took, on the 4th inst, strong westerly gales, which prevailed since that time without change.”
Display of letter on board her maiden voyage to England
Improvements in the speed of that communication were crucial for many commercial, financial and shipping business activities—speedier information made capital move faster, directly affecting world trade.
In 1840, the Patrick Henry was among twenty sailing packet ships on the New York–Liverpool run, and notably among the speediest. The short round trips, however, did not depend on speed, but rather changes in the schedule. Efficiency may have been improved by tightening schedules, but this may have exacerbated delays and errors of judgment.
For westbound sailings, there was a high risk of disaster. Nearly one packet in six was totally lost in service. This means that out of 6,000 crossings, about 22 ended in such wrecks. More than 600 British ships, of all types, were lost each year in between 1833 and 1835 and 1841 and 1842. The loss of lives varied between 1,450 and 1,560.
By the time of the maiden voyage of the Patrick Henry, in 1839, packet captains had begun taking more risks against their competitors as steamships were coming into service. Indeed, most shipwrecks took place during the period when the competition between sail and steam was hardest. From a mail, business and journalism transmission point of view, the trend was most alarming.
Between 1838 and 1847 no less than 21 mail-carrying ships were lost on the North Atlantic route—two each year on average. Two of the ships were Falmouth packets and two were steamers, while 17 were American sailing packets. Eight were on the New York–Liverpool route, two on the Boston–Liverpool route, two on the New York–London route, and five on the New York–Havre route. Six of the ships just disappeared, and were lost with all hands. It is notable that two out of every three wrecks took place in November–February, indicating that the packet captains took too heavy risks, especially during the rough winter sailings. The only precautionary measure to ensure solid business information transmission across the Atlantic was to send duplicates. This was very typical during the shift period. The duplicates also ensured the fastest possible dispatch of information.
Most mail—especially eastwards—was still carried by sailing ships during the first decade after the advent of the transatlantic steamship service.
Even if the size of the sailing packets grew markedly, their service speed did not follow the trend after the introduction of steamships on the route in the late 1830s. After 1835, there seems to be no signs of speed improvements.
Another phenomenon which indicates that the sailing packets were losing their hold on the first class business—mail, fine freight and cabin passengers—was that they no longer cared about the punctuality of the sailing dates as much as they did in the 1830s. If the reliability of a mail ship service is measured by the regularity of sailings and the safety records, the performance of the American sailing packets in the mid-1840s was noticeably below such expectations.
References
- Brinnin, John Malcolm (1971). The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic. New York: Delacorte Press. p. 6. LCCN 74-164846.
- The novel contains numerous references to packet boats, and includes a section entitled “Sail in packet-boat to Rotterdam“.
- Deborah Fitts, “Hull of Packet Boat That Carried Jackson’s Body Is Protected” Archived 7 September 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Civil War News, Jan 2007, accessed 22 November 2008
- Liverpool Mercury, 23 December 1825.
- Hollett, Dave. Passage to the New World: packet ships and Irish famine emigrants, 1845–1851. United Kingdom, P.M. Heaton, 1995, p. 78.
- Universal Postal Convention (PDF), Vienna: Universal Postal Union via Great Britain Philatelic Society, 8 July 1891
- Albion, Robert Greenhalgh. Square-riggers on Schedule: The New York Sailing Packets to England, France, and the Cotton Ports (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1938), p. 202
- Laakso, Seija-Riitta. “Across the Oceans: Development of Overseas Business Information Transmission, 1815–1875”. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, Tampere Tammer-Paino, 2007. PDF. Retrieved from the Library of Congress