But, having, within six months, lost one of their vessels, while another was disabled by storm, and a third rendered unfit for the mail service in her encounter with ice off Newfoundland, the Company, finding it impossible to raise fresh capital in the face of such disasters, had no course left but to abandon their undertaking and terminate their contract in May 1861. The return[249] of the earnings and costs to Government of the Galway line of mail steamers shows a heavy loss to the public, but, though I have no means of knowing the amount of the losses of the company itself during its brief career, these must have been far greater; indeed, it was currently reported that the shareholders lost in eighteen months nearly all, if not the whole, of their capital. [Sidenote: Struggles between the “clippers” and the iron screw-ships.] But, however disastrous the results to the American shareholders of the Collins line on the one hand, or to the British shareholders of the Galway line of steamers on the other (both these undertakings being, it should be remembered, largely subsidized), the ardour of private and unsubsidized energy in no way abated. The ocean race for supremacy in the carrying trade of the Atlantic was still maintained; and the struggle continued with quite as much spirit as ever between the American owners of sailing-clippers and the British shareholders of iron screw-steamers. It was a brave fight: but the wooden clippers of America had no chance against the iron screws of Great Britain, although the race was not then so unequal as might appear, arising from the fact that the current expenses of the clippers were far less then than those of the steamers, while their capacity for cargo was far greater. Indeed, for a time, it was questionable whether the clippers did not yield their owners quite as good returns on the capital invested as the steamers. The wooden clipper, however, had reached perfection, (the world having never previously seen a more splendid class of sailing-ships than the “Yankee liners of that day,”) whereas the screw, being still in its infancy, moved onwards with the progress of science, improvements in machinery tending to reduce the current expenses and to increase the capacity of the ship by reducing the consumption of fuel, so that the sailing-ships were obliged to succumb. At last, the screw-steamers slowly but surely obtained an almost complete supremacy, and have now no competitors (except among themselves) in the more valuable portion of the carrying trade across the Atlantic. [Sidenote: National Steam Navigation Company, 1863.]