The goods which were nobody’s property were sent on shore before the “Townshend” sailed, and doubtless were reclaimed by their original owners, so that, though the seamen lost their chance of profit, they incurred no actual loss. Possibly this is the reason why the seizure made so small an impression on the Service. If the goods had been confiscated, the searcher’s duties might have been less arduous; but, as it was, he found it necessary to report a few months later, that only four Packets out of the entire number employed on the Falmouth Station had not been detected in breaking the rule. It seemed impossible to teach the men that the new rule was intended seriously; and many a brave fellow, who had fancied foolishly enough that he would be exempted, or that he could evade the searcher, had the mortification of seeing the boots and cheeses which he had bought out of his scanty savings swimming in the harbour, or tossed unceremoniously into the first boat which came alongside, to be landed on the quay, where they would be at the mercy of any chance Autolycus. These things were hard to bear and not easily forgiven; while the blow was driven home on the arrival of the Packet at her destination, when the merchants’ clerks would come down offering Jack famine prices for the very goods he had been robbed of—so he would naturally put it to himself—and the price of many a spree on shore, to say nothing of pretty things for the wife at home, would go back into the merchant’s pocket instead of jingling in Jack’s. The wages were raised on the boats which were no longer allowed to trade, but the increase by no means compensated for the profits lost, and the seamen maintained that they were still lower than the current rate in the Merchant Service. If they were reminded that merchant sailors were exposed to the danger of the pressgang, while Packetsmen carried protections, they retorted that the protections were not always respected. This was true enough. For when the press-gangs were sweeping the streets of Falmouth, bursting forcibly into sailors’ drinking shops, and, half drunk themselves, giving chase to any sturdy fellow whom they met, it often happened that a Packetsman was seized and only laughed at, or knocked down and soundly cursed, when he claimed exemption. Sometimes his protection was torn in the scuffle. Sometimes it was fraudulently taken from him; and if then he lost his temper and became violent, he was told that his mutinous conduct had deprived him of any right to protection; and not even the intervention of the agent, or of the Postmaster General, could restore him to the Packet Service. So the irritation at Falmouth went on, sometimes seeming to die away, but ever reasserting itself, and often threatening serious trouble. There needed but some natural occasion for an outbreak; and such an occasion was found in 1810.