All the contracts thus provided for were concluded the same year. Each was to run for ten years. The first executed was that with Mr. Sloo. It called for five steamships of not less than 1500 tons, and a semi-monthly service. The line was to touch at Charleston, if practicable, and at Savannah. The ships were to have engines by direct action; and each ship was to be sheathed with copper. The subsidy was fixed at two hundred and ninety thousand dollars a year, a rate of $1.83-1/2 per mile, the distance to be sailed out and back being 158,000 miles.[GA] Mr. Sloo immediately set over his contract to George Law, Marshall O. Roberts, and Bowes McIlvaine, of New York.[GB] The second contract was for the Pacific service, connecting with the mail by the Sloo line across the Isthmus. This was made with Arnold Harris of Arkansas. It provided for a monthly service between Panama and Astoria, Oregon, calling at San Diego, Monterey, and San Francisco, with a subsidy of one hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars per annum. Three steamers were to be furnished, two of not less than a thousand tons each. Upon receiving the contract Mr. Harris immediately transferred it to W.H. Aspinwall of New York, representing the newly formed Pacific Mail Steamship Company.[GC] The third was the Collins contract. This stipulated for a semi-monthly service between New York and Liverpool during the eight open months of the year, and a monthly service through the four winter months, with five steamers, each of not less than 2000 tons and engines of a thousand horsepower. The first ship was to be ready for service in eighteen months after the date of the contract, November 1, 1847. The subsidy was fixed at $19,250 per twenty round trips, or three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars a year, a rate of $3.11 a mile for sailing about 124,000 miles.[GD] By subsequent acts the secretary of the navy was authorized to advance twenty-five thousand dollars a month on each of the ships called for by these several contracts from the time of their launching to their finish; and the date of the completion of the first Collins steamer and the opening of the New York and Liverpool service was extended to June 1, 1850.[GE] At the same time that the secretary of the navy was executing these contracts the postmaster-general under the authority of an act "to establish certain Post Routes and for other purposes," also approved March 3, 1847,[GF] was contracting for a steamship mail-service between Charleston and Havana, with a subsidy of forty-five thousand dollars per annum. This contract was entered into with M.C. Mordecai of Charleston, who agreed to furnish steamships suitable for war purposes, and to perform a monthly service.[GG] Several other propositions for steamship service to various foreign countries were made to the postmaster-general at this time, but none was accepted.[GH]