he
packets had attained to greater proportions and higher speed, the
average length of passage from Liverpool to New York being twelve days
one hour fourteen minutes. As years rolled on competition and the
exigencies of the times called for still more rapid transit, and at
the present day the several companies performing the American Mail
Service have afloat palatial ships of 7000 to 10,000 tons, bringing
America within a week's touch of Great Britain.

[Illustration: HOLYHEAD AND KINGSTOWN MAIL PACKET "PRINCE ARTHUR"--400
TONS--PERIOD 1850-60.
(_From a painting, the property of the City of Dublin Steam Packet
Company._)]

Going back a little more than a hundred years, it is of interest to see
how irregular were the communications to and from foreign ports by mail
packet. Benjamin Franklin, writing of the period 1757, mentions the
following circumstances connected with a voyage he made from New York to
Europe in that year. The packets were at the disposition of General Lord
Loudon, then in charge of the army in America; and Franklin had to
travel from Philadelphia to New York to join the packet, Lord Loudon
having preceded him to the port of despatch. The General told Franklin
confidentially, that though it had been given out that the packet would
sail on Saturday next, still it would not sail till Monday. He was,
however, advised not to delay longer. "By some accidental hindrance at a
ferry," writes Franklin, "it was Monday noon before I arrived, and I
was much afraid she might have sailed, as the wind was fair; but I was
soon made easy by the information that she was still in the harbour, and
would not leave till the next day. One would imagine that I was now on
the very point of departing for Europe. I thought so; but I was not then
so well acquainted with his Lordship's character, of which indecision
was one of the strongest features. It was about the beginning of April
that I came to New York, and it was near the end of June before we
sailed. There were then two of the packet-boats which had long been in
port, but were detained for the General's letters, which were always to
be ready _to-morrow_. Another packet arrived; she, too, was detained;
and, before we sailed, a fourth was expected. Ours was the first to be
despatched, as having been there longest. Passengers were engaged in
all, and some extremely impatient to be gone, and the merchants uneasy
about their letters, and the orders they had given for insuranc