Several large shipowning companies were not slow to place faith in the new material. In the early part of 1879, the “Allan Line” Company entrusted to Messrs Denny & Brothers, of Dumbarton, the order for a huge vessel, which the intrepid confidence of the principal partners in both the owning and the building firms determined should be of mild steel, be bound with steel rivets, and have her boilers of the same material. This was the large steamer _Buenos Ayrean_, the first transatlantic steamer built with the new material. She was finished early in 1880, and had not been over nine months in the water when the order for a second and still larger steel vessel—the _Parisian_—had been given by the same owners to Clyde builders. The Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, Messrs Donald Currie & Co., and several smaller companies, ordered vessels of steel almost simultaneously, while yet the new material was in the early stage of trial. Amongst the orders for steel vessels which were subsequently given, the _Servia_ and _Catalonia_, for the Cunard Company; the _Clyde_ and _Thames_ and _Shannon_ for the Peninsular and Oriental Company; the _India_, for the British India Company; the _Arabic_ and _Coptic_, for the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, and the four twin screw steamers of the “Hill” Line, represent the principals. The companies who then adopted the new material have mostly continued to have their new ships built of steel, and to name the vessels since built and now building in which this material is employed, would simply be to enumerate three-fourths the fleet of high-class modern merchant ships. There were 21,000 tons of steel shipping built throughout the United Kingdom in 1879; 36,000 in 1880; 55,000 in 1881; 126,000 in 1882; and over 244,000 in 1883. It is computed that at the present time the amount of steel shipbuilding going on throughout the kingdom is not less than 175,000 tons, or the largest amount on hand at any one time since its introduction. * * * * *