Packet Ship
Packet trade generally refers to any regularly scheduled cargo, passenger and mail trade conducted by ship. The ships are called "packet boats" as their original function was to carry mail.
A "packet ship" was originally a vessel employed to carry post office mail packets to and from British embassies, colonies and outposts. In sea transport, a packet service is a regular, scheduled service, carrying freight and passengers. The ships used for this service are called packet ships or packet boats. The seamen are called packetmen, and the business is called packet trade.
"Packet" can mean a small parcel but, originally meant a parcel of important correspondence or valuable items, for urgent delivery. The French-language term "paquebot" derives from the English term "packet boat," but means a large ocean liner.
This sense became extended to mean any regularly scheduled ship, carrying passengers, as in packet trade. The word "packet" is frequently modified by the destination, e.g. Sydney packet, or by motive force, e.g. "steam packet".
Read more about Packet Ship: History, Companies, United States, Australia, See Also, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words packet and/or ship:
“The captain was a duck
With a packet on his back,
And when the ship began to move
The captain said, Quack! Quack!”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. I saw a ship a-sailing (l. 13–16)
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)