The whole service, food and attendance included, is unexceptionable. There is ample accommodation for about 300 saloon, 170 intermediate and 1,000 steerage passengers. As to speed, they “must have swift steeds that follow” them. The _Teutonic_ has made the western voyage in 5 days, 16 hours, 31 minutes. The _Majestic_ has done it in 5 days, 17 hours, 56 minutes. In ordinary circumstances the passenger who embarks at Queenstown may safely calculate that six days will land him in New York by either of these ships. They are not quite so fast as the _Lucania_, but to gain the difference, say, of ten hours in crossing the Atlantic, the Cunarder requires an enormous increase of driving power—no less than 12,000 horse-power over and above that of the other. The _Teutonic_ and _Majestic_ are under contract with the British Government to be used as armed cruisers whenever their services may be required, the company receiving an annual sum of £14,659 10s. as a retainer.[20] Each of these steamers has accommodation for one thousand cavalry and their horses, or for 2,000 infantry. They could easily reach Halifax from Queenstown in five days, Cape Town in twelve and a half, and Bombay, _via_ the canal, in fourteen days from Portsmouth. They could even steam to Bombay, _via_ the Cape, 10,733 knots, in twenty-three days without stopping to coal. The White Star fleet at present consists of nineteen ocean steamers, ranging in size from 3,807 to 10,000 tons and upwards. Five of these steamers are employed in the Atlantic weekly mail service, three keep up a monthly line to New Zealand, four ply monthly from San Francisco to Japan and China, the remainder are cargo boats of large carrying capacity. A number of vessels built for this company have been sold to other lines and are still running. The _Oceanic_, pioneer ship of the line, after a few years in the Atlantic service, was transferred to the company’s trans-Pacific line. On her sixty-second voyage in October, 1889, she crossed from Yokohama to San Francisco in 13 days, 14 hours, 4 minutes, the fastest voyage then on record across the Pacific. Having completed twenty-five years of successful work she was sold and broken up in 1896. But the name is to be perpetuated by the magnificent new steamer now building at Belfast, which in point of size and speed is designed to surpass any vessel at present afloat. The new _Oceanic_ is longer than the _Great Eastern_.