By 1850 there were no fewer than seven or eight lines of steamers trading between New York and Liverpool. The Cunard Company had eight of the finest steamers in the world, and the ninth, the _Africa_, was expected shortly to arrive from the builders at Glasgow. An agitation had been maintained for some years in America for a subsidised American steam-ship service, which should surpass the British line. The Government at last was prevailed upon to promise financial support to a line of steamers under certain conditions, and the necessary legislation was passed by Congress in March 1847. The vessels were to be of the highest class, of great speed, and of superior passenger accommodation, and so fitted that they could be turned into war steamers at small expense. Mr. K. Edward Collins of New York, owner of the well-known Dramatic Line of sailing ships, so called because they were named after famous theatrical people, organised the line and was well supported by American capitalists and influential commercial men generally. The Collins Line, as the organisation was called, undertook, by a contract signed in November 1847, to provide a mail service between New York and Liverpool, fortnightly in summer and monthly in winter, with five first-class steam-ships, for which 19,250 dollars per trip for twenty round trips, or 385,000 dollars a year, were to be paid, but as the first four ships built for the line were very much larger, swifter, and more expensive and more valuable to the nation[65] than the exact terms of the contract required, the Government in 1852 increased the subsidy to 858,000 dollars a year. [65] Marvin’s “American Mercantile Marine.” [Illustration: THE “ATLANTIC.”] Money was spent upon the Collins liners like water, and everything in every department was of a most costly and luxurious description. Indeed, so lavish was the expenditure upon the Collins boats that even had they not met with the series of disasters which afterwards befell them, and had the line not been deprived by the United States Government of its subsidy for carrying the mails, it is doubtful whether it would ever have been a commercial success. Thus a description of the _Atlantic_ says: “Her interior fittings are truly elegant, the woodwork being of white holly, satin wood, rosewood, &c., so combined and diversified as to present a rich and costly appearance. In the drawing-room the ornaments consist of costly mirrors, bronze-work, stained glass, paintings, &c. On the panels between the stateroom passages are the arms of the different States of the Confederacy painted in the highest style of art, and framed with bronze-work.