FROM THE ARCHIVES:Mail from America came by liner and was landed first at Cobh, then Queenstown, more than a century ago, in spite of efforts by English ports and railway companies to have it brought ashore there. This report showed the effort put into handling it with speed and efficiency in Ireland. – JOE JOYCE
THE GREAT Southern and Western Railway Company, which in recent years has done so much to preserve to Ireland the carriage of the American mails, despite opposition of a very serious kind, scored a distinct success yesterday in the method with which they dealt with one of the largest mails ever landed at Queenstown, and once more demonstrated the superiority of the Irish route.
So complete were their arrangements – as, indeed, were those of the Post Office and the London and North-Western Company – that the mail, which only reached Queenstown Harbour after eleven o’clock, will be delivered this morning in London and almost all parts of the United Kingdom.
Once only has a larger mail been dealt with in this country, but never before has the distance between Queenstown and Dublin been covered in the same time.
The White Star Liner Teutonic, after a remarkably good passage, reached Queenstown Harbour yesterday at 11.5, having on board 2,889 sacks, comprising the Irish, English, Scotch, and Continental mails. Of these 2,500 were for England alone, the remainder being the Irish and Scotch portions. Three tenders were in readiness, into which the entire mail was quickly transferred by the crew, and a short time later it was being dealt with at Queenstown by a staff of 50 railway men [...] and carried to the special train which was in waiting. The transference was completed in a remarkably short time, considering the fact that the men had to travel some distance between the tenders and portion of the train, and at 12.49 the long “special,” made up of two powerful engines, and nineteen vans, left for Dublin.
In addition to the 2,889 sacks a Legation bag passing between the American and British Governments was carried, and two second-class passengers were permitted to travel by the train. Only three stops were made on the upward journey – Mallow, which was reached at 1.34, Limerick Junction, and Portarlington. The usual time occupied in the journey by trains carrying mails is between four and four and a quarter hours, but in this instance all previous records were broken, and at 4.43 the long train steamed into North Wall Station having completed the journey in three hours and forty-three minutes, or six minutes less than the time occupied recently in the carriage of the mails landed from the Oceanic, which were, however, only a third as heavy as those of yesterday. As usual, the London and North-Western Company, to whom the English and Scotch portions were transferred at North Wall, had made ample preparations for dealing with the transference in the shortest time.
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