my uncle, Lord John Russell, the future Prime Minister, spent on the journey in 1806.  He was then a schoolboy at Westminster, his father, the sixth Duke of Bedford, being Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.  My uncle, who kept a diary from his earliest days, gives an account of this journey in it.  He spent three days going by stage-coach to Holyhead, sleeping on the way at Coventry and Chester, and thirty-eight hours crossing the Channel in a sailing-packet.  The wind shifting, the packet had to land her passengers at Balbriggan, twenty-one miles north of Dublin, from which my uncle took a special post-chaise to Dublin, presenting his glad parents, on his arrival, with a bill for L31 16s., a nice fare for a boy of fourteen to pay for going home for his holidays!

In order to fulfil the terms of the 1860 contract, the mail-trains had to cover the 264 miles between London and Holyhead at an average rate of 42 miles per hour; an unprecedented speed in those days.  People then thought themselves most heroic in entrusting their lives to a train that travelled with such terrific velocity as the “Wild Irishman.”  It was to meet this acceleration that Mr. Ramsbottom, the Locomotive Superintendent of the London and North-Western Railway, devised a scheme for laying water-troughs between the rails, by which the engine could pick up water through a scoop whilst running.  I have somewhere seen this claimed as an American innovation, but the North-Western engines have been picking up water daily now ever since 1861; nearly sixty years ago.

The greatest improvement, however, was effected in the cross-Channel passage.  To accomplish the sixty-five miles between Holyhead and Kingstown in the contract time of four hours, the City of Dublin Co. built four paddle-vessels, far exceeding any cross-Channel steamer then afloat in tonnage, speed and accommodation.  They were over three hundred feet in length, of two thousand tons burden, and had a speed of fifteen knots.  Of these the Munster, Connaught, and Ulster were built by Laird of Birkenhead, while the Leinster was built in London by Samuda.  These boats were most elaborately and comfortably fitted up, and many people of my age, who were in the habit of travelling constantly to Ireland, retain a feeling of almost personal affection for those old paddle-wheel mailboats which carried them so often in safety across St. George’s Channel.  It is possible that this feeling may be stronger in those who, like myself, are unaffected by sea-sickness.  I think that we all took a pride in the finest Channel steamers then afloat, and, as a child, I was always conscious of a little added dignity and an extra ray of reflected glory when crossing in the Leinster or the Connaught, for they had four funnels each.  I think that I am correct in saying that these splendid seaboats never missed one single passage, whatever the weather, for nearly forty years, until they were superseded by the present three thousand tons, twenty-four knot twin-screw boats.  The old paddle-wheelers were rejuvenated in 1883, when they were fitted with forced draught, and their paddles were submerged deeper, giving them an extra speed of two knots.  Their engines being “simple,” they consumed a perfectly ruinous amount of coal, sixty-four tons for the round trip; considerably more than the coal consumption of the present twenty-four knotters.