Mail steamer

Packet boats were small boats designed for domestic mail, passenger, and freight transportation in European countries and their colonies, including North American rivers and canals. They were used extensively during the 18th and 19th centuries and featured regularly scheduled service.

When such ships were put into use in the 18th century on the Atlantic Ocean between Great Britain and its colonies, the services were called the packet trade.

Packet craft were used extensively in European coastal mail services since the 17th century, and gradually added cramped passenger accommodation. As early as 1629, the Dutch East India Company was carrying some passengers on the ill-fated Batavia from Texel in Holland to Java. Later, scheduled services were offered, but the time journeys took depended much on the weather. They are even found to be a subject of Daniel Defoe's 1724 novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. In England the King maintained a weekly packet service with the continent and Ireland using 15 packet vessels. Their importance was evident in the Rose Hill Packet becoming the first craft built in the colony of New South Wales in 1789. In North America, when the Erie Canal opened in New York state in 1825 along the Mohawk River, demand quickly rose for travelers to be accommodated.

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.

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