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THE FALMOUTH MUTINY OF 1810. 



Bt ARTHUR HAMILTON NORWAY. 



The disturbances which occurred in the late summer and 

 autumn of the year 1810, among the seamen serving on the 

 packets on the Falmouth Station, are of interest from more than 

 one point of view ; not only as having provoked a feeling of 

 irritation on the part of those responsible for the order of the 

 service, which led immediately to the removal of the packets 

 from Falmouth to Plymouth for some months, and in the end 

 was possibly one among the causes which induced the govern- 

 ment to place them under the more direct discipline of the 

 Admiralty, but also as throwing light on the conditions of life 

 among the sailors, at a time when the service was in its fullest 

 vigour. 



In August of the year named above, it was reported by the 

 Post Office Agent at Falmouth, Mr. Christopher Saverland, that 

 there was some uneasiness among the sailors then in port. The 

 restlessness was confined at that time to the Lisbon packets, and 

 was caused by an order which had recently been issued, 

 prohibiting the practice of carrying out manufactured goods, to 

 sell in Lisbon on commission ; a practice which had hitherto 

 formed a lucrative source of income to officers and crew alike. 



It should be explained that this practice had grown up in 

 defiance of the law. A statute of Charles II, which had never 

 been repealed, distinctly forbade the packets to carry goods, 

 except with the consent, expressly obtained, of the Commissioner 

 of Customs. It had, however, been the custom from a very early 

 date upon the Falmouth Station, to regard the Lisbon packets 

 as excepted from this statute : and every sailor who took service 

 upon one of these packets, looked forward confidently to making 

 many times the amount of his wages, by the sale of goods on 

 commission for the merchants of Bristol. 



It was no doubt extremely advantageous in those days of 

 war, for the merchants of the West of England to have at hand 

 a means of conveying goods, which was at once so prompt, so 



