The speaker was looking at a paper setting forth that the British Government were open to consider contracts for the carrying of the letters by steamships between Great Britain and America. Encouraged, no doubt, by the success attending the conveyance of the mails by similar means to the Peninsula, the Government were now going farther afield.
The practicability of ocean steam traffic had been amply demonstrated; but some of those early steamships did not “pay,” and to that test, after all, such undertakings must come. Now, the man into whose hands the circular had fallen was of great intelligence and remarkable energy. He was a merchant and owner of ships, and agent for the East India Company at Halifax, Nova Scotia. His name has since become known the wide world over. It was Samuel Cunard.
Apparently he had cherished the idea of establishing transatlantic steam traffic for some years—since 1830 it is said—and now, here was the opportunity. The British Government would, of course, give a handsome sum for carrying the mails, and that sum would form a backbone to the enterprise.
Over came Cunard to London in 1838. Mr. Melvill, the secretary of the East India Company, gave him a letter of introduction to Mr. Robert Napier, the eminent engineer at Glasgow. Thither then went the indomitable merchant, and was heartily welcomed. Napier knew Mr. George Burns, who was partner with Mr. David MacIver in a coasting trade, and the upshot of the matter was that capital of considerably over a quarter of a million (£270,000) was subscribed through Mr. Burns’s influence.
The first great step thus taken, Mr. Cunard made a good offer to the Government, and although another offer was made by the owners of the Great Western, Cunard got the contract, the tender being regarded as much more favourable. The subsidy was eventually £81,000 per annum. The contract was for seven years, and was signed by the three gentlemen mentioned—Cunard, Burns, and MacIver.
These three divided the labour. Cunard ruled at London, MacIver at Liverpool, and Burns at Glasgow. Napier was to engine the new vessels. It was decided that their names were all to end in “ia,” and nearly every one of the now historic fleet has rejoiced in a title of that ending. There is a sailor’s superstition that it is unlucky if the vessels of a fleet are not named with some uniformity; but we doubt if the superstition influenced the Cunard Company. In any case, they broke another superstition by starting their first ship on a Friday! She was a mail ship, and she had to go. The Cunard Company meant business.
But about their fleet. Their first order was for four vessels, all of about the same size and power. The Britannia was the first, and her sisters were the Caledonia, the Columbia, and the Acadia. They were paddle steamers, the value of the screw not having then been clearly and widely demonstrated, all of them about 207 feet long, 35⅓ feet broad, 22½ feet deep, and 1154 tons burthen. The engines—side-lever, of course, in those days—were of 740 horse-power. The boilers had return-flues, and were heated by a dozen furnaces.
They would look now quite out of fashion, like a lady’s dress of a past age. They appeared something like sailing ships, with the straight funnels added.
The Britannia began the service by starting from Liverpool on the 4th of July, 1840, and, attaining a speed of about 8½ knots per hour, she made the passage to Halifax in 12 days, 10 hours, and returned in 10 days. Her average consumption of fuel was about thirty-eight tons daily.
The Bostonians gave the Britannia quite an ovation. A grand banquet, followed by speeches, celebrated the great occasion. But they gave even more practical appreciation of their favour subsequently, for when, in the winter season, the vessel became ice-bound in the harbour, they cut a seven-mile passage for her through the ice, at their own cost.