Since 1840 the Cunard Company have employed no less than fifty-six first-class passenger steamships in the Atlantic service alone. The entire fleet at present consists of thirty-three ships, with a total tonnage of 124,124, and 153,732 horse-power, and maintains regular communication from Liverpool to New York, Boston, France and almost every country in the Mediterranean. Excepting some of the ships acquired by purchase, all the others were built to order on the Clyde. In all these fifty-eight years the Cunard Company has only lost three ships. Through the mistake of her pilot, the _Columbia_, one of the first Atlantic fleet, ran ashore during a fog near Cape Sable, N.S., in July, 1843, and became a total wreck, but her mails and passengers were safely landed. In 1872 the _Tripoli_, of the Mediterranean Line, was wrecked on the Tuskar Rocks in St. George’s Channel, half-way between Cork and Dublin, but no lives were lost. In 1886 the company met with its severest loss by the sinking of the magnificent steamship _Oregon_, recently purchased from the Guion Company. Early in the morning of the 4th of March she was run into by an unknown sailing vessel when about fifty miles from New York, and such were the injuries she sustained she gradually filled with water and went to the bottom, not, however, before the whole ship’s company, numbering 995 souls were safely transferred to the _Fulda_ of the North German Lloyd Line, which fortunately came up to the scene of the disaster in the nick of time. Her bulkheads should have saved her from going under, and would have done so, but for some unexplained obstruction to the closing of a watertight door. As it was, the bulkheads kept her afloat long enough to save the lives of all on board.