The late Sir Samuel Cunard was a son of Abraham Cunard, a merchant in Philadelphia, and a Quaker, whose ancestors had come to America from Wales in the seventeenth century, and who removed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. There Sir Samuel was born, November 21st, 1787. His parents were not in affluent circumstances; indeed he has been heard to tell that, when a boy, he often went about the streets with a basket on his arm selling herbs that were grown in his mother’s garden, to earn “an honest penny.” In course of time, however, he became a prosperous merchant and the owner of whaling-ships that sailed from Halifax to the Pacific Ocean. How he came to identify himself with the Atlantic mail service has already been mentioned, and little else remains to be said about him. He was small of stature, but a man of rare intelligence; a keen observer of men and things, and who had the faculty, largely developed, of influencing other men. In private life he was one of the most gentle and lovable of men. He married, in 1815, a daughter of Mr. W. Duffus, of Halifax, by whom he had nine children. On March 9th, 1859, Her Majesty, on the recommendation of Lord Palmerston, made him a Baronet, in recognition of his services to the realm and to other countries in promoting the means of inter-communication. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1846. He died in London, April 28th, 1865, leaving, it is said, a fortune of £350,000. His title and his interest in the business were inherited by his eldest son, Sir Edward Cunard, at whose decease, in 1869, the reins of administration fell into the hands of his brother William, who married a daughter of the late celebrated Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia, and who now represents the company in London.
Sir George Burns was, in many respects, a remarkable man. He was born in the Holy Land, a name popularly given to a “land” of houses in Glasgow, in which five ministers resided, one of them being his father, the Rev. John Burns, D.D., of the old Barony parish, who ministered in that place for seventy-two years, and who died at the patriarchal age of ninety-six. George was born in 1795. He commenced business in Glasgow with his brother James, under the firm of G. & J. Burns & Co., a name that has ever since been famous in shipping circles. They began steam navigation to Liverpool and Belfast over seventy years since, and gradually built up a large and lucrative business. Many years ago Mr. Burns retired and took up his residence at Wemyss Bay, on the estuary of the Clyde, where he spent the evening of his days, and was frequently seen sitting among his rhododendrons and laurels, watching his steamers as they coursed up and down the Firth. He was created a Baronet in his old age, May 24th, 1889. He died on the 2nd of June in the following year, being succeeded by his son, Sir John Burns, of Castle Wemyss, who is chairman of the Board of Directors of the Cunard Steamship Company. Sir John’s elevation to the peerage, at the time of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee, when he assumed the name of Lord Inverclyde, was regarded as a well-merited honour by his countrymen, and in shipping circles generally.
Although he was a son of the “Father of the Church of Scotland,” Sir George early in life contracted a liking for the liturgical service of the Church of England, and eventually became an Episcopalian. “Sir George Burns, Bart.: His Times and Friends, by Edwin Hodder; Hodder and Stoughton, London,” is the title of an admirable biography in which is to be found a fine portraiture of a man “diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” As a business man he is described as “honourable in the minutest particulars, accurate in all his dealings, faithful to every trust, tenacious of every promise, disdaining to take the least advantage of the weakness or incapacity of any man.” There is also much information in this volume, bearing on the history of the Cunard Line, that is valuable and interesting, and of which we have freely availed ourselves in compiling these pages.
David MacIver, a Scotchman, as his name implies, had lived a good many years in Liverpool before his connection with the Cunard Company, and had acquired a great deal of valuable experience in shipping affairs. His first intercourse with Burns was somewhat singular in the light of their future alliance. It was as the agent of an opposition line of steamers, plying between Liverpool and Glasgow, that their friendship began. A Manchester firm had started an opposition line, but they were no match for G. and J. Burns, who eventually bought them out, and secured a monopoly of the trade, except the small steamer Enterprise, for which David MacIver was agent, and which the same firm cleverly bought also. Not to be outdone, MacIver succeeded in organizing the “New City of Glasgow Steam-Packet Company,” of which he became the Liverpool agent. Determined, if possible, to drive his rivals from the seas, it is said that he used to sail in the vessels himself, urging his officers to increased speed. But it was of no use; the new company were soon glad to accept offers for amalgamation, and from that time MacIver and Burns became fast friends. Mr. MacIver had first-rate executive ability, and as most of the working details devolved upon him, he had a controlling influence in the Cunard Line while he lived. The well-known firm of D. & C. MacIver were the managers of the line at Liverpool, from its formation until the year 1883, when they resigned, a Board of Directors assuming the entire control of affairs. David MacIver, however, had died in 1845, when the Liverpool agency fell into the hands of his brother and partner, Charles, whose able supervision continued for thirty-five years.
Robert Napier was born at Dumbarton in 1791. After serving his apprenticeship as millwright and smith, he went to Edinburgh, where he wrought at his trade for some time, earning ten shillings a week. Inspired by the old Scotch motto, “He that tholes overcomes,” he stuck to it. Later, he entered the service of Robert Stephenson, the celebrated engineer, and made his mark as a mechanical genius. At twenty-four years of age he commenced business on his own account, in Glasgow, where he gradually built up the large engineering and ship-building business subsequently carried on under the name of Robert Napier & Sons. The “Lancefield Works” and his Govan shipyards attained world-wide celebrity. He constructed the machinery for the SS. British Queen, and for the first four Cunard steamers, and for many others in later years. He also received large orders for warships and transports from the British Admiralty and from foreign governments. He built several large ironclads for the Royal Navy. He made the engines for the great three-decker, Duke of Wellington—all but the last of the “wooden walls.” He built and engined the famous Cunarders Persia and Scotia.
ROBERT NAPIER AND MRS. NAPIER.
Mr. Napier erected a princely mansion on the Gareloch, named Shandon House, where his declining years were spent in retirement, but in the exercise of unbounded hospitality, as the writer can testify from his personal experience. Shandon House came to be like a museum containing a rare collection of pictures and antiquities from almost all parts of the world. Among his curios none was more highly prized than his mother’s spinning-wheel, and the painting that he valued the most was the portrait of his wife plying the same old-fashioned spinning-wheel, with which she had been familiar from girlhood. Does it not seem like the “irony of fate,” and a melancholy commentary on the transitory nature of everything mundane, that this marvellous accumulation of articles of virtu was, shortly after Mr. Napier’s death, sold by public auction to the highest bidder, and that his palatial residence passed into the hands of a hydropathic company?
Having said so much about the Cunard Line, there is no need to dwell at similar length upon any of the other transatlantic lines of steamers. The history of the Cunard Line is the history of Atlantic steam navigation. It commenced at a time when steam power had only been used as an auxiliary to sails, but when that order of affairs was soon to be reversed. The intervening years have witnessed the transition from wooden ships to iron, and from iron to steel; from the paddle-wheel to the single screw-propeller, and then to the twin-screw; from the simple side-lever engines to the compound, and from the compound to the triple and quadruple expansion engines of the present time. These successive changes, common to all the other important lines of ocean steamers, have resulted in greatly increased speed with economy of fuel. But no one at all conversant with the subject supposes that the limit in either of these directions has been reached. Her Majesty’s torpedo boats can easily reel off their thirty knots an hour; why not an express steamer?