The Dublin and London Steam Packet Company, under the management of Messrs. Bourne, decided in 1834 upon establishing a line of steamers between London and the Spanish peninsula. The proposed line was to be called the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, and its first steamer was probably the _Royal Tar_. This steamer, by the way, had previously been chartered in 1834 to Don Pedro and then to the Queen Regent of Spain. It is hardly correct, however, to describe these Admiralty vessels as warships, for the Admiralty steam vessels at that time were gunboats, or despatch vessels, steam for line-of-battle ships not being used until some years later. The Peninsular Company chartered a number of vessels for its early service, but it was not until 1837 that it commenced to despatch mail-packets regularly from London to Lisbon and Gibraltar under contract with the British Government, which at that time and for twenty years afterwards was represented by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. This contract was tendered for by both the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company and a concern called the British and Foreign Steam Navigation Company, but the latter was unable to convince the Government that it possessed the resources, both financial and shipping, which would enable it to carry out the engagement. The Peninsular Company, on the other hand, was able to give the required assurance. The company undertook, in return for an annual subsidy of £29,600, to convey the mails monthly to the Peninsula. The pioneer vessel of this service was the _Iberia_, of 690 tons and 200 horse-power, which sailed in September 1837. Altogether the company had ten vessels, two of which were chartered from the City of Dublin Company. The statement is often made that the steamer _William Fawcett_[71] was the first boat of the company; she was built in 1829 by Caleb Smith of Liverpool, and her engines were by Messrs. Fawcett and Preston, also of Liverpool; and after being used for some years as a ferry-boat on the Mersey she was placed on the Liverpool and Dublin route and may have been “chartered for a short time to the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company in 1835 or 1836, as she does not appear in the company’s advertised sailing list for 1838.”[72] [71] See the Frontispiece to this book. [72] Kennedy’s “History of Steam Navigation.”