The “express steamers,” as the fast ships are now called, of the Cunard Line at present are the _Campania_, _Lucania_, _Etruria_ and _Umbria_. These four constitute the weekly mail service, sailing every Saturday from Liverpool and New York. The _Aurania_, _Servia_ and other vessels perform a fortnightly service from the same ports, sailing on Tuesdays. Five steamers are employed in maintaining a weekly service between Liverpool and Boston, and about a dozen more are required for the service between Liverpool, France and the Mediterranean. The story of the Cunard Company would be incomplete without at least a brief reference to its three founders, Messrs. Cunard, Burns and MacIver, and Mr. Napier, the engineer, who was so closely identified with them. [Illustration: SIR SAMUEL CUNARD. SIR GEORGE BURNS. DAVID MACIVER. THE FOUNDERS OF THE CUNARD LINE.] The late Sir Samuel Cunard was a son of Abraham Cunard, a merchant in Philadelphia, and a Quaker, whose ancestors had come to America from Wales in the seventeenth century, and who removed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. There Sir Samuel was born, November 21st, 1787. His parents were not in affluent circumstances; indeed he has been heard to tell that, when a boy, he often went about the streets with a basket on his arm selling herbs that were grown in his mother’s garden, to earn “an honest penny.” In course of time, however, he became a prosperous merchant and the owner of whaling-ships that sailed from Halifax to the Pacific Ocean. How he came to identify himself with the Atlantic mail service has already been mentioned, and little else remains to be said about him. He was small of stature, but a man of rare intelligence; a keen observer of men and things, and who had the faculty, largely developed, of influencing other men. In private life he was one of the most gentle and lovable of men. He married, in 1815, a daughter of Mr. W. Duffus, of Halifax, by whom he had nine children. On March 9th, 1859, Her Majesty, on the recommendation of Lord Palmerston, made him a Baronet, in recognition of his services to the realm and to other countries in promoting the means of inter-communication. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1846. He died in London, April 28th, 1865, leaving, it is said, a fortune of £350,000. His title and his interest in the business were inherited by his eldest son, Sir Edward Cunard, at whose decease, in 1869, the reins of administration fell into the hands of his brother William, who married a daughter of the late celebrated Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia, and who now represents the company in London.