QUESTION. (Hansard, 6 December 1867)

MR. GILPIN
asked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether there would be any objection to lay upon the table of the House a copy of the correspondence between the Treasury, the authorities of the Post Office, and the Royal Mail Steam Company as to the retention of the Island of St. Thomas as the chief West India Packet Station; and whether the attention of the Government had been called to the lamentable loss of life on board the Royal Mail steamer Tamar, consequent on her calling at the Island of St. Thomas? He had no interest, direct or indirect, in any ocean steamer; but was induced to call attention to this subject from motives of humanity, as he found that the lives of the crews and passengers of the packets were endangered by the continual existence of yellow fever in the Island. As St. Thomas had just changed hands, and had become an American instead of a Danish possession, and the Post Office buildings and the wharves had been destroyed in the late hurricane, this was a suitable time for choosing another mail packet station.

§ MR. KINNAIRD
also desired to ask the hon. Gentleman, whether he was in communication with the Admiralty on this question? In the opinion of many St. Thomas was a most inconvenient port of call, as well as unsuitable because of the constant prevalence of yellow fever there. Why not select our own Island of Jamaica, where there was an excellent harbour, and where, in case of detention, there were hills to which passengers might resort? Before re-constructing the buildings destroyed in the storm, he thought it was worth consideration whether it would not be wise to make one of our own islands at any rate the mail packet station, Instead of expending capital in an Island now transferred to the United States. He hoped the attention of the 666 noble Duke the Postmaster General would be turned to this subject.

§ MR. THOMAS CAVE
said, that a case had come to his knowledge in which a gentleman who was to have received the wife of a friend on landing had had the painful task of writing to her husband to say that she was dead. The efforts of the magnificent Company so ably presided over by a noble Lord on the other side of the House were entirely neutralized by the fact that we would persist in calling at this hotbed of disease. The vessel of the Panama Company reached Panama from New Zealand three days before her time; the passengers were transferred to the Tamar, and reached St. Thomas in perfect health, but on the voyage thence and before she reached England she had several fatal cases. Occurrences of this kind had almost ruined the Panama Company.

§ MR. HUNT
said, that the subject was undergoing very careful consideration, but there was no correspondence at present to be laid upon the table. The communications between the Treasury, the Colonial Office, and the Admiralty, which had taken place had been entirely unofficial, and the communications with the Company were only verbal. The whole matter would be very carefully considered during the Recess, and he hoped when the House met again he should be able to make some announcement of the decision that would have been come to.