The Collins line obtained its share of a steadily increasing passenger traffic between the Old and New Worlds. It carried freight at from $30 to $40 a ton; it had the advantage of an immense subsidy; but to all intents and purposes the corporation was bankrupt at the end of six years. It cost too much to maintain the high rate of speed required by the Government. Moreover, two vessels were lost; the Arctic, which went down after a collision with a French steamer off Cape Race, in September, 1854, when two hundred and twenty-two of the two hundred and sixty-eight people on board were drowned; and the Pacific, which was never heard from after she left Liverpool on June 23, 1856. Almost simultaneously with the inauguration of the Collins line another candidate for ocean business appeared, bringing with it two innovations of great importance to all travellers. This was the Liverpool, New York, & Philadelphia Steamship Company, better known, even in its own offices, as the Inman line. It was the original plan of this company to establish a line between Liverpool and Philadelphia, and for several years, beginning in 1850, no calls were made at New York. The Inman Company was successful in securing a contract from the British and Canadian Governments for carrying the mails _via_ Halifax, and was the successor to the Cunard line on that route; the company then settled down, with a comfortable mail contract, to carrying passengers, freight, and mail between Liverpool and New York, calling at Queenstown on every trip. [Illustration: More Comfortable on Deck.] During the Crimean War the transatlantic trade received a severe check, as more than half the steamships were withdrawn and placed in the service of the British and the French Governments as transports. During that time the Collins line and other American lines received quite an impetus by many of the vessels of both the Cunard and Inman lines being required for transport duty. At the close of the Crimean War, however, a reaction set in when these ships were again put in commission, with a decidedly disastrous effect on the American lines. In 1855 Commodore Vanderbilt endeavored to get a subsidy from the American Government for a mail line to Europe, but, notwithstanding his failure to procure this contract, he placed three or four vessels on the route between New York, Southampton, and Havre, and later on the Bremen route. The venture was more or less profitable. Almost the last remnants of American enterprise in Atlantic passenger traffic disappeared with the steamships Fulton and Arago of the New York and Havre line, which were withdrawn in 1868. Mention should, however, be made of the American line, with four iron screw steamers, which began to run between Philadelphia and Liverpool in 1873, and ran regularly since its inception, without any Government subsidy.