Sessional_Paper_1884-1885 — Page 106

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Messrs. Bisset & Co., Yokohama, to the London Post Office,

YOKOHAMA, 12th August, 1884.

SIR, We beg to bring to your notice the great inconvenience we have been put to by the action of the Postmaster in Hongkong.

The mails from London of 27th June arrived in Hongkong 31st July, and the connecting Steamer of the P. & O. Com- pany, viz. the Thibet, which, unfortunately for us, is not under contract with H. B. M. Government, left that port on 2nd instant for this via Nagasaki and Kobe, arriving here only yesterday morning. The Steamer Gordon Castle left Hongkong 3rd instant, and arrived here this morning, but, for some inscrutable reason, our mails were detained until 4th instant, and then put on board a slow vessel called the Altnacraig, which as yet (11 A.M.) has not made her appearance.

Since the subsidy for the Japan line was withdrawn we have been frequently subjected to inconvenience of this kind, and we trust H. B. M. Government may yet see fit to renew it.

Meantime we, in common with our fellow residents here, will feel greatly obliged if any representations or instructions from you to the Hongkong Post Office will tend to prevent such mismanagement as the case we have now described.

We remain, &c.

The Hongkong Post Office to the London Post Office.

(Signed)

BISSET & Co.

No. 846.

GENERAL POST OFFICE, HONGKONG, 23rd October, 1884.

SIR, I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter No. 235,918 of September 19th on the subject of a complaint from Messrs. BISSET & Co. of Yokohama relating to the delay which took place in transmitting to Yokohama the mail despatched from your Office on June 27th.

2. It is characteristic of the treatment which this Department receives from the Yokohama community that Messrs. BISSET & Co. should endeavour to get behind the Hongkong Post Office with a complaint of which no copy was forwarded

to me.

This is the second attempt of the kind that has been made. It is equally characteristic that Messrs. BISSET & Co. should not even wait till the steamer as to which they complained had come in, nor for the full explanation which, as they very well know, has always been afforded whenever any difficulty has arisen, but should, as is customary at Yokohama, fly at this Office with all manner of charges before they were in possession of the facts of the case.

3. It has been explained to the public of Yokohama again and again that it is absolutely impossible for this Office to predict what steamer will reach that port first, if only for the reason that the departures of vessels from Hongkong are frequently postponed at the last moment, or, what makes the matter still more difficult, delayed from hour to hour, the Agent meanwhile assuring this Office that he expects to get the vessel away any minute. Meanwhile other steamers may have left, and if they arrive at Yokohama first the outcry against the Post Office begins all over again as if it were the first time the subject had been heard of.

4. In the case in question this Office was no doubt to some extent misled by incorrect information. The real cause of the delay however was not the slowness of the Altnacraig, but the fact that at the last moment a fight broke out amongst the crew, which detained the steamer here from Saturday evening till Tuesday morning. When intelligence of her detention reached the Post Office the other steamers were gone. The same cause of delay might have happened to either of them. Every possible enquiry had been made by this Department, and, under the same circumstances, the same decision would again be come to. No reasonable person would have thought of putting the mail on board the Thibet, yet, as it happened, the Thibet was the first to arrive. The commander of the Gordon Castle, the only other steamer, was himself one of the persons who advised this Office to send the mail by the Altnacraig, although he would have preferred to draw the allowance made by the Japanese Post Office for carrying it.

5. Two routes are open for the conveyance of the English mails for Yokohama, viz., by direct steamers, or by the P. & O. steamers which call at Nagasaki and Kobe. The direct route should of course be the quickest, but then the Whenever this P. & O. steamers are faster than many of the private ships by which the mails would otherwise be sent.

Office selects the unsuccessful route, the Yokohama papers immediately proclaim the other as that which should invariably be adopted. Thus, if a direct steamer arrives first, it is asked why the Hongkong Post Office cannot always send the mail by direct steamer. The next time, the reverse happens, and then it is demanded why the mails are not regularly sent by the P. & O. steamer (“the connecting steamer as Messrs. BISSET & Co. call it, because it happened to be a success on that occasion.)

6. The Yokohama community forget also that whilst merchants and Bankers here prepare their correspondence for Japan in duplicate, so that it is comparatively easy for them to secure the earliest arrival of documents, this Office has only one mail to send.

7. This Office has not failed to secure the arrival of the mail in Yokohama by the first steamer more than three or four times in four years. Once, and once only, we were distinctly to blame, as was amply acknowledged. If this sort of correspondence is to continue, I shall have to consider whether it will not be better to put the mails for Japan on whichever steamer is leaving first, no matter what vessel it is or by what route it is going. The Yokohama Chamber of Commerce has been asked to appoint an Agent here who would direct this Office in the matter, but this suggestion has been ignored, in fact none of the Japanese communities will take the smallest trouble to secure the carrying out of their wishes.

$. A. BLACKWood, Esq., C.B.,

Secretary to the Post Office,

LONDON.

I have, &c.,

A. LISTER, Postmaster General, Hongkong.