Yes, I suppose that the most familiar ships in Southampton docks
were the … what I always call the Lavender Ladies, the Union Castle
liners. I heard quite a lot about those because they were a
Southampton company really. And when I first started as a
messenger boy, Union Castle Line, or we always called it the Cape
Company, the Post Office and the Union Castle had a wonderful
working arrangement.
Question: So tell me how the mail was taken into the
ships.
Oh yes, well, the mails were made up in the Southampton head office
there in the High Street, in the sorting office at the back, and of
course it were all carried in bags, out to all the various places
in South Africa and Rhodesia. They were taken down to the docks.
They were loaded into … in nets and hoisted up and dropped down to
the hold and stowed away in the hold and of course the registered
mail was put into a strongroom, but the Union Castle were very very
particular about their mails. That was their...always seemed
to be their main concern, the mails. There used to be a
little gang of postmen and an inspector, assistant inspector, and
(laughs) they always went by the name of the Four Funnel
Group. They went down each day you see and loaded the mail on
the latter end of the week, but the first part of the week of
course they were concerned with unloading the mail. Mail boat
used to come in at 6 o'clock on Monday morning...
Question: Every week?
...every week, yes, it used to come in on 6 o'clock on Monday
morning, and it would dock as regular as a railway train. Our
chaps would be there and they would start to unload that mail as
soon as they got there, and they had a train all ready
waiting. In the old days it used to be on the boat train but
then the mail got that big that they couldn't accommodate it on the
boat train, so they might make a special. As the mails came
off in the net, they were tipped on the quayside and you had a gang
of dockers there and they used to pick the bag up and put it on
their back with the tally upwards, and the inspector, they used to
shout out the name of the tally, where it was going...say
Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and that docky took the bag to
the wagon that was labelled to the particular town, you see.
(Laughs) And that was how it used to go on until you got to the end
of it, you see. And then, of course, when it was all loaded
into the railway wagons you shut them up and sealed them and then
informed the railway that was all ready and then they sent a shunt
engine to haul it away and put it on the end of the train. It
was quite...I mean it sounds easy but it wasn't quite so easy as
that because you had to take the numbers of all the wagons and
advise the people where they were going, what was coming to 'em,
and what wagon it was in. It was quite a job in its
way. Somewhere I remember reading in an old diary that was
laying about in the Post Office, all about many years previously
where it said...there was a little entry that said...paid half a
crown for a fly to take the Cape mail to the station. Well a
fly was a cab and (laughing) and it mustn't been a very big mail
they could put in the cab. In my time, well, you had vans
going there all the week, van loads, van loads of stuff. But
we had quite a wonderful gang of chaps really, I must say that
because I was one of them. In that sorting office, we used to
make up mails for the Cape, South Africa and Rhodesia we always
included as the Cape, USA, Canada, Australia, Central America and
that was quite common, that was our normal routine in sorting
those. You could have one chap there sorting South African
and you could go over to him and say, here so-and-so go and sort
the USA, and he just switched over and sorted USA just the same as
if you go from one street to the next. You had all it up
here.
Question: That would be going by a different shipping
line?
Oh, yeah, yes, yes, all the Yankee mails and that went across on
the Cunard or White Star liners, you see. White Star used to
sail on a Wednesday at midday, and the Cunard on Saturday at
midday. Yes, oh yes, it was all made up on those.
Question: What about the Royal Mail Line, do you remember
that?
Oh, the old Royal Mail, well they used to go to the West Indies,
you see. I remember all the old Royal Mail boats, the old Andes and
Almonzora, and Arlanza, Araguaya (laughs) Avon. Yes.
They were nice ships too. They all disappeared.
Yes. It was a great life. It was an interesting life
for a boy, you know. On a sailing day we always made a great
effort to get all the telegrams down to the ships you see, and of
course we only had bicycles. Sometimes when it got … we knew
what time the ship was going to sail and the Cape liners
particularly they sailed dead on time, 4 o'clock they sailed, come
hell or high water they sailed at 4 o'clock, and you might be the
one that got the last lot of telegrams you see, or the inspector
would say to you, here so-and-so, see if you can catch the
so-and-so...the Edinburgh Castle or something like that you
see. Perhaps you had a couple of minutes or so, or
perhaps.... (Laughs) and you used to get on a bike and go haring
off down to the docks, down to the berth, and you'd get there
sometimes when the ship was just pulling away from the quayside,
had the tugs at her. Well what used to happen was, if you
could manage it, was to hail the ship, get one of the seaman there
to heave you a line, ask them for a line, and they'd heave you what
they called a heaving line. They'd throw one ashore and if you
could catch it and back twist it, stick the telegrams in the rope,
twist it back again, and up it used to go. Then deliver the
telegrams that way (laughs). Yes.
