The _Sirius_ sailed on her homeward voyage on the afternoon of the 1st of May, her advertised time, and the _Great Western_ on the 7th of that month. The former reached England on the 18th of May, the latter on the 22nd, being respectively, sixteen and fourteen days on the passage. The whole distance run from Bristol to New York, by the _Great Western_, was 3125 knots,[173] her average speed being 208 miles each day, or 8·2 per hour, consuming 655 tons of coal. Her return passage was accomplished at an average of 213 knots each day, or close upon 9 knots an hour, with a consumption of 392 tons of coal (the difference of consumption arising no doubt in a great measure from the prevalence on her homeward passage of westerly winds); her average daily consumption on this occasion varied from 27 tons, with expansive gear in action, to 32 tons without it.[174] As the _Sirius_ was not intended for the American trade she made only the one voyage across the Atlantic and, on her return to Liverpool, was dispatched to London to open up steam communication between that city and St. Petersburg, where she was for some years successfully employed. [Sidenote: _Royal William_, the second of that name, the first steamship from Liverpool, 1838.] But another steam-vessel was soon engaged to take the place of the _Sirius_. On the 6th of July, 1838, a paragraph in the public journals[175] announced the interesting fact that the enterprising merchants of Liverpool, who now hold the great bulk of the Anglo-American trade in their hands, had dispatched their first steam-ship, the _Royal William_, though the second of that name, to New York.[176] Although the practicability of steam navigation across the troubled waters of the Atlantic had now been triumphantly established, other steam-ships having followed the _Royal William_ in rapid succession, many years elapsed before the magnificent sailing-vessels which American energy and skill had created, were driven from the trade. [Sidenote: followed by the _Liverpool_.]