Before this, various companies had been proposing to build steamers, but nothing had been done. In 1828 an Act of Parliament was obtained for the incorporation of the Valentia Transatlantic Steam Navigation Company, which was to run a line of steamers from the west coast of Ireland to America. The company proposed to build a steamer at a cost of £21,000. She was to carry fifty cabin passengers and as many in the steerage, and 200 tons of cargo in her hold. It was suggested that she should be of about 800 tons displacement, with engines of 200 horse-power, and her speed was to be such that she could make six voyages each way in twelve months. The company announced in 1828 that it would commence operations immediately, but the public held aloof, and seven years later matters were no further advanced. Then the project was revived, and considerable interest was taken in it because it was suggested that the enterprise should be worked in connection with the new railway from London, the new Post Office packets and the Valentia Railway. It was at this time that Dr. Lardner, a man of recognised scientific attainments, made his remarkable assertion regarding the impossibility of establishing steam navigation between New York and Liverpool. According to a report of a meeting at which Dr. Lardner was present, that gentleman pointed out that “the only difficulty would be as to the run from Valentia to St. John’s.” He continued: “As a last resource, however, should the distance between Valentia and St. John’s prove too great they might make the Azores a stage between, so there remained no doubt of the practicability of establishing a steam intercourse with the United States. As to the project of making a voyage directly from New York to Liverpool, it was, he had no hesitation in saying, perfectly chimerical, and they might as well talk of making a voyage from New York or Liverpool to the moon.”[57] [57] Liverpool _Albion_, December 14, 1835. While England was listening to the depressing remarks of Dr. Lardner, America was at work. In 1835 Junius Smith[58] from Massachusetts began to consider the navigation of the ocean by steamers, and in 1836 he proposed to form the British and American Steam Navigation Company. The company was actually established in 1837 by Mr. Macgregor Laird with a capital of £1,000,000, but Smith’s connection with the scheme ceased, as he saw himself unlikely to make as much out of the enterprise as he had anticipated. [58] The name is given as “Junius Smith” in Appleton’s “Cyclopædia of National Biography.”