![HMCS Lady Evelyn CN-3274](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/HMCS_Lady_Evelyn_CN-3274.jpg)
A mail tender is a small steamboat used to carry
mail
The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...
. As a
tender it only carries mail for short distances between ship and shore, ferrying it to and from a large
mail steamer
Packet boats were medium-sized boats designed for domestic mail, passenger, and freight transportation in European countries and in North American rivers and canals, some of them steam driven. They were used extensively during the 18th and 19th ...
.
The use of tenders for loading passengers and their luggage was well established even before the Edwardian heyday of
ocean liner
An ocean liner is a passenger ship primarily used as a form of transportation across seas or oceans. Ocean liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes (such as for pleasure cruises or as hospital ships).
Ca ...
s as the major means of intercontinental transport. They avoided the need to wait for these large ships to enter harbour and be docked, sometimes involving the wait for suitable tides. Tenders were also used by intermediate ports, where they could stand out to sea beyond a harbour
bar
Bar or BAR may refer to:
Food and drink
* Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages
* Candy bar
* Chocolate bar
Science and technology
* Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment
* Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud
* Bar (u ...
and exchange passengers, without the large ship needing to enter port. In the Victorian times of several postal deliveries a day, speed was of the essence in transporting mails and the slightest time advantage would be seized upon.
Passenger tenders such as the could be quite large, being able to ferry 1,000 passengers – a comparable number, although a shorter journey, to the liner itself. Mail tenders were often much smaller than this. Passenger tenders were usually owned by the shipping lines and would only service their own vessels, mail tenders were often owned by national post offices and would attend any mail ships.
In his memoir ''
The Uncommercial Traveller
''The Uncommercial Traveller'' is a collection of literary sketches and reminiscences written by Charles Dickens, published in 1860–1861.
In 1859 Dickens founded a new journal called '' All the Year Round'', and the "Uncommercial Traveller" ar ...
'',
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
describes a voyage from New York to Liverpool on
Cunard
Cunard () is a British shipping and cruise line based at Carnival House at Southampton, England, operated by Carnival UK and owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. Since 2011, Cunard and its three ships have been registered in Hamilton, Berm ...
's first
screw steamship , and meeting the mail tender out of
Queenstown, Ireland.
Queenstown, today named Cobh, was an important port for the Irish transatlantic trade. Being only a small harbour though, it relied on tenders. Only a few passengers were to be put ashore on Dicken's voyage and so they too were ferried by the mail tender. In 1868 the
Post Office Surveyor and novelist
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope (; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the '' Chronicles of Barsetshire'', which revolves ar ...
gave Dickens another encounter with a mail tender, when their ships crossed paths in New York. Possibly trading on his role as consultant for the trans-atlantic mail service, he arranged to have a mail tender ferry him between ships, merely to meet his friend Dickens.
With the development of fast railways, passages along a coast could also be speeded up by mail tenders. In 1907 the
''Lady Evelyn'' was purchased by Canada's Postmaster General to act as a mail tender for the mouth of the
Saint Lawrence River
The St. Lawrence River (french: Fleuve Saint-Laurent, ) is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. Its headwaters begin flowing from Lake Ontario in a (roughly) northeasterly direction, into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, connectin ...
on Canada's East Coast. This was to replace an older steamer, the ''Rhoda'', described in parliament by
Lemieux as 'a disgrace'.
Liners for the inland port of
Quebec City
Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...
would pass by the small tender port of
Rimouski
Rimouski ( ) is a city in Quebec, Canada. Rimouski is located in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, at the mouth of the Rimouski River. It has a population of 48,935 (as of 2021). Rimouski is the site of Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), t ...
, 200 miles downstream. Mail offloaded by tender here could by taken by train to Quebec much faster than on the liner.
In the years immediately before World War I, Queenstown was still a regular intermediate stop by tender for the liners and .
Fishguard
Fishguard ( cy, Abergwaun, meaning "Mouth of the River Gwaun") is a coastal town in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with a population of 3,419 in 2011; the community of Fishguard and Goodwick had a population of 5,407. Modern Fishguard consists of two pa ...
in South West Wales also developed, particularly as a mail offloading port from where the mail for London could be rushed by train along the
West Wales
West Wales ( cy, Gorllewin Cymru) is not clearly defined as a particular region of Wales. Some definitions of West Wales include only Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, which historically comprised the Welsh principality of ''Deheuba ...
and
South Wales Main Line
The South Wales Main Line ( cy, Prif Linell De Cymru), originally known as the London, Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway or simply as the Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway, is a branch of the Great Western Main Line in Great Britain. ...
s, arriving only about five hours later. The mail tender came alongside first and was turned around in as little as fifteen minutes. Passengers were then carried in a separate tender, taking a slightly more leisurely twenty five minutes.
![Parcel post steamship 10c 1913 issue](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Parcel_post_steamship_10c_1913_issue.JPG)
A mail ship and its tender appear on the 10 cent
US Parcel Post stamp of 1912
See also
*
Dispatch boat
Dispatch boats were small boats, and sometimes large ships, tasked to carry military dispatches from ship to ship or from ship to shore or, in some cases from shore to shore. Dispatch boats were employed when other means of transmitting a message w ...
References
{{Reflist
Steamships
Postal vehicles