How did the Island Packet get such a funny newspaper name? The history might surprise you

The little packet boat continues to belch smoke high atop our front page, successfully weathering another wave of change.'

But exactly what is a packet?

The Island Packet is an unusual name for a newspaper. Staff members constantly have to explain it and scramble to answer: "The island what?"

The funniest twist came in a job application from a man in India. It was addressed to "The Iceland Pocket."

We were named for a packet boat: a boat that travels a regular route along the coast, carrying passengers, freight and mail.

At least one other newspaper has the name -- the Princeton Packet in New Jersey. Even though it's an inland paper, the origin of its name is the same as ours. President and publisher Jim Kilgore said it dates to the paper's founding in 1786 when packet ships brought news from Europe.

The story of our founding, written by Hartsville novelist Elizabeth Boatwright Coker, says that Ralph Hilton, our first editor, "not only came up with the paper's name, The Island Packet, but found a silhouette of such a vessel with smoke billowing behind it, for its masthead."

I recently discovered that what he came up with looks very much like a silhouette in the 1937 book, "Seed From Madagascar," by Clinch Heyward.

His book traces the rise and fall of large-scale rice cultivation in the Lowcountry, and includes a chapter on the diaries kept for 45 years by his ancestor, Charles Heyward. This fellow liked to build boats, and he sometimes sketched them in his diary. It's an 1830 drawing of his boat named the Fire-Fly that looks like our logo.

"These small boats, propelled by steam, were used only on the Combahee (River) during the winter months for duck and alligator shooting," Clinch Heyward writes.

So maybe our packet boat actually delivered thrills instead of bills, news and weary travelers. Maybe it was a handmade Lowcountry version of what was then the world's steamy, cutting edge technology.

That, too, would be fitting, especially as it roars off today's new presses.

But it's still a funny name for a newspaper.

*This column was originally published in 2007.

This story was originally published May 25, 2017 at 9:35 AM with the headline "How did the Island Packet get such a funny newspaper name? The history might surprise you."