Only a few years have elapsed since the banana was almost a curiosity here, but thanks to the enterprise of Elder, Dempster and Co., who practically created the tropical fruit trade and built several steamers for the conveyance of tropical fruit to England, the banana has become most popular. The West India Islands, especially Jamaica, have derived immense benefit from this trade, the encouragement of this and other tropical products having brought it no small measure of prosperity. For this work the Imperial Direct West India Mail Service, Ltd., was established in 1901, maintaining at first a fortnightly and then a weekly service from Bristol to Jamaica. In connection with this service there are numerous inter-island services. The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in 1905 inaugurated their splendid “A” class of steamers, of which the _Aragon_, _Amazon_, _Avon_, _Araguaya_, and _Asturias_ are examples. The largest of these is the _Asturias_ of 12,500 tons. In part directly and in part through its connections the company’s enterprise extends to all parts of the world. It acquired in 1907 an interest in the Shire Line of steamers engaged in a regular service from London to Port Said, Suez, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama; and in 1908 it took over the old-established Forwood Line service from London to Gibraltar, Morocco, Las Palmas, Teneriffe, and Madeira. The repairs effected to ships since they have been built of steel are no less wonderful than the building of the ships themselves. It is by no means uncommon for a ship to be cut in half, the pieces drawn asunder, and the intervening space built up. The repairing of the _Suevic_ by fitting it with a new bow was not the first operation of the kind. The _Milwaukee_ was similarly treated at Wallsend by Armstrong. The destroyer _Syren_ lost her bows by stranding at Berehaven, but the after portion with the machinery was saved and given new bows by the Palmer Company, the two parts being towed to Haulbowline for the purpose. The Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer _Hudson_ had her bows so badly damaged by fire that she had to be provided with new ones. Nor are the repairing feats effected by the steamers’ engineers in mid-ocean, often in circumstances of extreme difficulty, less praiseworthy and remarkable, especially when it is a matter of patching a fractured propeller shaft while the vessel is rolling in the trough of a heavy sea and the work has to be performed in the semi-darkness of the shaft tube. The steamer _Norfolk_, in 1906, after her engines broke down in the Indian Ocean, was taken into Fremantle under improvised sail. The sails were made of tarpaulins stitched together and the necessary spars were improvised out of derrick booms. [Illustration: THE “ASSINIBOINE” IN SAULT STE. MARIE CANAL (CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY CO.).]