The Post Office Packet Service dates to Tudor times and ran until 1823, when the Admiralty assumed control of the service. Originally, the Post Office used packet ships to carry mail packets to and from British embassies, colonies and outposts. The vessels generally also carried bullion, private goods and passengers. The ships were usually lightly armed and relied on speed for their security. That said, Britain was at war almost continuously during the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries with the result that packet ships did get involved in naval engagements with enemy warships and privateers, and were, occasionally, captured.
Read more about Post Office Packet Service: Stations, Wartime Service, Admiralty Control, Later Developments, See Also, References and Sources
Famous quotes containing the words post office, post, office, packet and/or service:
“A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a good cheap hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.””
—William Harmon (b. 1938)
“Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“The office ... make[s] its incumbent a repair man behind a dyke. No sooner is one leak plugged than it is necessary to dash over and stop another that has broken out. There is no end to it.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“There are some circles in America where it seems to be more socially acceptable to carry a hand-gun than a packet of cigarettes.”
—Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926)
“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”
—Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington (1769–1852)