This magnificent specimen of a merchant-steamer surpassed in all respects any vessel which had hitherto crossed the Atlantic, having made the passage (allowing for difference in time, but including the detention of landing mails and passengers at Queenstown) in eight days, twenty-two hours, from New York to Liverpool. Though the Collins Company had collapsed, the Cunard Company were not left in undisputed possession of the intercourse they had established, except so far as regards any further competition from steam-vessels subsidised by the Governments of Great Britain or of the United States. But as no mean rivals in the trade had arisen from among their own countrymen, they found it necessary to add vessel after vessel to their fleet, each new one of a still more improved description, and therefore wisely turned their attention to the screw as a means of propulsion. [Sidenote: _Russia_, first Cunard screw-steamer, 1862.] In 1862 they sent forth the _China_, in 1864 the _Cuba_, in 1865 the _Java_, and in 1867 the _Russia_, all built of iron in the Clyde, but fitted with the screw instead of paddle-wheels, and embodying various improvements upon even the _Scotia_. The _Russia_ is 2960 gross register, and, though her engines are only 492 horse-power,[214] her speed equalled that of either the _Persia_ or _Scotia_, she having made the passage from New York to Queenstown in eight days and twenty-eight minutes, and from Queenstown to New York in eight days, five hours, and fifty-two minutes mean time, thus affording another instance (if, indeed, any more were required) of the superiority of the screw over the paddle-wheels. [Sidenote: _Bothnia_ and _Scythia_, 1874.] [Sidenote: Their construction.]