The _Lady Eglinton_ made two trips between the Irish port and the St. Lawrence in 1858. This vessel was lengthened in 1865 by 30 feet. One of the company’s boats, a little paddle-steamer named the _Mars_, which maintained a local service between Dublin and Wexford, was a good sea-boat, and sufficiently speedy for her size to attract the attention of the agents of the Confederate States of America, who purchased her for use as a blockade-runner. In this she was fairly successful for some little time, but accounts differ as to what became of her. It is stated that a blockade-runner of that name was wrecked on one of the keys off Florida in endeavouring to escape from a Federal gunboat. Another version is that the _Mars_ received a hostile shell between wind and water, which exploded inside the ship so that she went down. In 1865 the _Lady Wodehouse_ was built for the company at Dublin by the shipbuilding firm of Walpole, Webb and Bewley, who four years afterwards built the _Countess of Dublin_. The year 1870 was one of the most important in the history of the company, for it bought the steamers of Messrs. Malcomson’s London and Dublin Line, the _Cymba_ and _Avoca_, and has since had a monopoly of that service. The _Lady Olive_, of 1096 tons, acquired in 1879, was the last iron vessel the company had built; all the succeeding vessels have been of steel. [Illustration: THE “LADY ROBERTS” (BRITISH AND IRISH STEAM PACKET COMPANY).] The engines of the earliest boats were of the usual side-lever type. These in time gave place to compound engines, and the modern steel vessels have triple-expansion engines. The present fleet consists of the _Lady Olive_ and the _Lady Martin_, of 1365 tons gross, the latter, built by Messrs. Workman and Clark at Belfast in 1888, being the company’s first steel ship. The _Lady Hudson-Kinahan_, of 1375 tons, was built by the Ailsa Shipbuilding Company at Troon in 1891, and this company also constructed in 1897 the _Lady Roberts_, of 1462 tons gross, while the _Lady Wolseley_ was launched in 1894 by the Naval Construction Company at Barrow. THE POWELL AND HOUGH LINES