The competition for the supremacy of the sea in these latitudes has been both keen and costly, but greatly to the benefit of the travelling community; and it has all along been conducted in an excellent spirit. Circumstances have frequently arisen when it might have been easy to take advantage of a rival, but when it resulted in acts of chivalry. Sir John Burns has mentioned one instance out of many such that have transpired: On a certain occasion the Cunard steamer _Alps_ was seized in New York for an alleged infraction of the Customs laws on the part of some of the crew, and before she could be released, security had to be given to the extent of £30,000 sterling; when, “who should come forward and stand security for the Cunard Company but the great firm of Brown, Shipley & Co., the agents of the Collins Line!” Another case in point is connected with the foundering of the Cunard SS. _Oregon_. When the whole of the passengers and crew, to the number of nearly a thousand, had been taken off the sinking ship, and landed in New York by the North German Lloyd SS. _Fulda_, the question having been asked what compensation was demanded, the courteous reply was speedily received: “Highly gratified at having been instrumental in saving so many lives. No claim!”[15] The Fairfield Ship-building and Engineering Company is one of the most famous of the many eminent ship-building firms in Britain. The yards at Govan on the Clyde occupy an area of sixty acres of ground, and employ from 6,000 to 7,000 men. The shops are fitted with machinery of the most approved description, in which every requisite of marine architecture has a place, where massive plates of steel and iron are clipped, shaped and pierced with rivet holes as if they were only sheets of wax or paper. Here have been built many of the record-breaking ocean greyhounds, as well as armour-plated cruisers for the Royal Navy. The _Arizona_, the _Alaska_ and the _Oregon_ were built here, and were accounted marvels in their day. The _Umbria_ and _Etruria_, the _Campania_ and the _Lucania_ have secured for Fairfield a world-wide reputation. Ships for Sir Donald Currie’s Castle Line, for the Orient and the Hamburg-American lines, not to speak of the Isle of Man steamers, the swiftest coasting steamers of the day, have been built at Govan. Under the name of Randolph, Elder & Company the firm was founded, or rather reconstructed, by the late Mr. John Elder, a man of consummate ability in his profession, who died in 1869 at the early age of forty-five years.