Not content with cutting rates to vanishing-point, the northern rivals indulged in lively newspaper polemics in the shape of advertisements, which praised their own boats and gave the lie direct to the manifestos of their opponents. The owners of the _Swift_, sailing from Glasgow, advertised the “great superiority” of their vessel “over the cock boat that is puffed off as sailing direct from the Bromielaw.” “For the sake of strangers coming from a distance it may be proper to state that her power and size are double, and her speed so much greater, that when the two vessels start together the _Swift_ runs the other out of sight in five or six hours.” The _George Canning_ was the vessel referred to in this contemptuous manner and her owners retorted in kind. Their advertisement referred to the “contemptible article in the _Swift’s_ advertisement” as “stating a gross falsehood knowing it to be such.” The _Swift_ is challenged to produce a single instance of ever having accomplished her passage from Belfast in so short a time as the _George Canning_, and the public are informed that the two have never yet sailed together either from Belfast or Glasgow, and the _Swift_ is asked when and where she ran the other out of sight.[43] So matters went on until the _Swift_ was sold to the London, Leith, and Edinburgh Shipping Company in 1826. The companies actually carried saloon passengers from Belfast to Glasgow for 2_s._ a head; second cabin passengers went for 6_d._, and deck passengers went free. [43] _Glasgow Herald_, June 30, 1825. The war on the Liverpool and Dublin route ended in the Liverpool Companies carrying saloon passengers for 5_s._ and steerage passengers for 6_d._ each, one of the vessels conveying on one voyage seven hundred steerage passengers at that fare. Negotiations between the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company and the Dublin and Liverpool Steam Navigation Company followed, by which the former purchased the Navigation Company’s steamers. They had then a fleet of fourteen vessels and entered upon a long career of prosperity, chequered by occasional battles with rival companies. A rate war with the Langtry Company of Belfast ended in the steerage fare between Liverpool and Belfast being reduced to 3_d._, including bread and meat. For a time, too, there was rivalry between the Dublin Company and the Waterford Commercial Steam Navigation Company, which in 1837 joined in the trade between that city and Liverpool with the iron paddle-steamer _Duncannon_, of 200 tons, built by Laird of Birkenhead. This was probably the first iron steamer built for the cross-channel service, but by no means the first to be seen in Irish waters.