"Upon the eighty-seven passengers home, and the 130 out, at 40 guineas passage money per head in the saloon, and 35 guineas in the cabin, each way, the directors of the Great Western will have received upwards of £8000, exclusive of the benefit derived from the conveyance of goods, of which the Great Western brought from New York to the extent of about 200 tons' measurement."
The Liverpool Albion is then quoted as saying that "the last trip of the Great Western netted £6000."
The Great Western continued in the New York and Bristol and the New York and Liverpool trades until she had made seventy-four passages, and she was then sold for use between England and the West Indies. These facts are of importance to the history of the American merchant marine, because our writers who have favored paying subsidies to American steam lines have asserted that in those days it was not possible to run steamship lines between the United States and England without a subsidy. The Great Western made money without a subsidy. So did many other steamers that followed, as shall appear.
We now come, however, to the story of the first lines of subsidized transatlantic steamships. One Samuel Cunard, a wealthy merchant of Nova Scotia, had been dreaming about steam navigation since 1830, and when the Great Western Company had shown the way, he went to England in order to arrange for a line from Liverpool to Halifax, and thence to Boston. After consultation with eminent men of experience in steam navigation, he gave an order to Robert Napier, the foremost designer and builder of steamships in the kingdom, for four steamships of about 900 tons each. But before the work was begun, Napier convinced him that larger ships would prove more profitable, and as the larger ships would cost more than Cunard had to invest, George Burns, of Glasgow, and David McIver, of Liverpool (both of whom were men of experience), were united with him in forming what is now known as the Cunard Company. The Britannia, the first ship built for this company, was a wooden vessel 207 feet long by 34 wide and 22 deep, registering 1156 tons. She had engines of 423 horse-power. The other three ships built at that time were slightly smaller.
It is to be noted that this company was formed to run ships in opposition to the Great Western and to Smith's lines. They were to depend upon what traffic they could get for success and upon nothing else. But in the meantime the British government had been considering the advisability of employing steamships to carry the royal mail across the Atlantic. Theretofore certain brigs had been employed by the Admiralty for this purpose, and beginning in 1821, government-owned brigs were employed exclusively. This proving expensive, the plan of hiring privately owned brigs was resumed in 1833, and these brigs were in use at that time. The success of the Great Western having proven the efficiency of steamships in the transatlantic trade, the postal authorities, in connection with the Admiralty, decided to use steam, and when Cunard came into the field, bids were invited for a mail service under certain burdensome conditions among which were these: The ships were to be fit for war use, carrying heavy guns, a naval officer was to be carried to care for the mail, and the ships were to be sold to the Admiralty on demand at a valuation. The Great Western, as well as the Cunard people, put in bids. The Great Western did not know that they would have opposition, and bid accordingly, with the result that Cunard made the better offer and got the contract. The full story is told in Lindsay's History of Merchant Shipping. Cunard was to receive at first £3295 per voyage, but, the plans having been modified, the subsidy was raised to £81,000 a year. For this he was to maintain a fortnightly service from Liverpool by way of Halifax to Boston, and with a line of smaller steamers from Halifax to Quebec. The Britannia left Liverpool upon her first voyage on July 4, 1840. No American writer has as yet pointed out that this was "a beautiful coincidence of nominal dates."
Sailing of BRITANNIA, February 3, 1844
From a contemporary engraving
A few months later the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was organized especially to carry the mail to the West Indies, including St. Thomas, Haiti, and Cuba, and to Chagres, to Mexico, and to the south part of the United States, as well. A branch line was to be maintained from the West Indies to Brazil. The contract (made in March, 1841) called for fourteen steamships built so as to carry "guns of the largest caliber" then in use in the navy; and the frames and planking were of a thickness to resist shot as well as a frigate—as, indeed, were those of the Cunard line. The commanders of the ships were to be naval officers. The subsidy paid was £240,000 a year.
It is important to note that this line was to run regularly to Chagres, where there was not enough traffic to pay the expense of the ship while lowering a boat to carry the mail ashore, and, further, that there was not enough traffic anywhere on the route to pay any considerable part of the expense of the line. Indeed, the traffic and subsidy together proved insufficient to pay expenses. Further than that, the time allowed in all the ports was limited—to six hours at the important island of Barbados, for instance, and to twenty-four at Port Royal, Jamaica, where there was an important naval station. It was impossible to handle any valuable quantity of West India cargo in such short periods. It is therefore certain that frequent and swift voyages were wanted in the establishing of this line, rather than the carrying of cargo. And this is to say that it was established for the same reasons that brigs had been used in carrying the royal mail theretofore. It was a political and military service that the ships were to perform.