The overseas mail service of the colony of South Australia 1836-1901

© 1951 Margaret Ch. de CrespignyIntroduction: Before the first contract was made with a steamship company for the carriage of mails between England and Australia in 1852, no attempt was made by the British Government to provide a regular mail service to each of the Australian colonies. A contract was signed in 1843 for a monthly service of sailing ships to carry the mails to Sydney and back, but no provision was made for the other colonies, and the official packet service was usually slower than the service given by private vessels carrying mails. The colonies were therefore dependent upon the traders and transport sailing vessels calling at their ports, and forwarded their mails by them direct, or else to neighbouring colonies for onward transmission. Their mails were received in a similar manner. Opportunities were not very frequent in South Australia during the first few years after its settlement, but they increased during the forties, and by the turn of the half century opportunities were most frequent. Arrangements were made in 1842 for mails to be forwarded from and to England from South Australia via India and Suez by the P. and O. Company, or between Bombay and Suez by the East India Company, various persons in India acting as forwarding agents. This route, which was subsequently improved by the mails being forwarded across France between Marseilles and Calais, took longer that the direct all-sea route. The Sydney packet service, after a three year trial, also proved unsatisfactory for South Australian mails. So that the carriage of mails between Adelaide and England and the continent was entirely subject to the vagaries of the shipping traffic of traders and transports, all of which were compelled by law to accept and deliver mails, but whose movements were uncontrolled and unreliable. The average time taken for transporting mails to or from England between 1840 and 1850 was about 158 days; towards the end of the forties the usual time taken was from 120 to 130 days. The voyage out was on average quicker than the voyage home. During the forties, agitation, both in Australia and England, for the inception of a steamship mail service, grew with increasing vigour until the British Government was finally induced to contract with the Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company in 1852 for the carriage of mails to the Australian colonies. The discovery of gold in Australia, and the repeal of the Navigation Laws in 1850, doubtless influence the decision of the authorities, but in any case it would not have been possible for them to have withstood the demands voiced both in England and Australia for what was obviously a most essential requisite for England’s relationship, social, economic, and administrative, with Australia, viz. a regular steamship mail service