The “financing” of such an undertaking requires time: there are long consultations between the directors, bankers, and ship-builders. If we could follow the steps of the gentleman to whom these negotiations are intrusted, we might see him flying off from Liverpool for Euston: closeted in a private office down in Lombard Street or Cornhill with some capitalists who are expected to contribute to the necessary funds; again, after dinner, engaged in argument with these same capitalists in a West End mansion to which they have adjourned, and then racing off in the precarious hansom cab to catch the night train from King’s Cross for Glasgow. Sometimes the ship-builders are willing to become part owners of the projected vessel; sometimes they take as part payment for the work some older vessels of the line, which they refit, re-engine, modernize, and sell again. The ability of the builders to make an arrangement of this kind, of course, influences the placing of the contract, in a measure, but they must also be able to give certain guarantees. They must enter into an engagement that the projected ship shall be able to carry so many passengers and so many tons of cargo, and to attain a specified speed on a given consumption of coal per day. Let us say, for instance, that the stipulations are these: Accommodations for 600 saloon passengers, 150 intermediate passengers, and 1,500 steerage passengers; registered tonnage, 6,000, speed, 19 knots on a consumption of 300 tons per day. If the ship fails to fulfil these conditions the builders agree to forfeit a part of the amount they would otherwise receive for her, or they may be compelled to take her back altogether. This was the case with the City of Rome, which was built for the Inman line by the Barrow Ship-building Company. A beautiful ship in every way; of exquisite model; fitted with a degree of luxury unsurpassed at the time she was launched, she proved to have neither the speed nor the carrying capacity which had been guaranteed, and the Inman line refused to accept her. In a very few instances only are such guarantees omitted from the contract. Now, ship-building is not an exact science, and the closest calculations are often upset in the result by unforeseen and inexplicable causes. It can never be said with absolute certainty just what speed a ship will attain, or exactly what quantity of cargo she will carry. The most ingenious and patient of experiments have not yet succeeded in eliminating the mysterious variability of result which the ship-builder finds, however closely he repeats his well-defined formulas. Two ships, like the Umbria and the Etruria, may be built side by side, of identical materials, lines, and dimensions; engines, boilers, and propellers may be the same, yet one will turn out to be a knot or two faster than the other, and neither the designer nor the builder is able to say why.