Of four new vessels which were built for the Holyhead-Kingstown service in 1860 we may mention the _Leinster_. She was a large vessel for those times, with a displacement of 2,000 tons, and constructed of iron. The illustration facing this page shows a capital model of her engines, which were of the oscillating type, and since we have previously described this kind it is hardly necessary to deal with them now, further than to remark that they gave the ship a speed of nearly 18 knots. Coming now further south, it will be remembered that Napier’s _Rob Roy_, which had first plied between Greenock and Belfast in 1818, was in the following year transferred to the Dover and Calais route, and was thus the first regular steamship to open the mail and passenger service between these ports. This was followed for a long time by other steam “ferries,” some of which were Government mail packets, and others were privately owned. The General Steam Navigation Company, which had been formed in 1820, and commenced its steam coastal trade, was not long before it had inaugurated a service between London and Hamburg, and by 1847 it had steamships running between London and the following ports:--Hamburg, Rotterdam, Ostend, Leith, Calais, Havre, as well as from Brighton to Dieppe, and Dover to Boulogne. These were all paddle-steamers until the screw was introduced in 1854. In April of 1844 their paddle-steamer _Menai_ was advertised to leave Shoreham Harbour, calling at Brighton Chain Pier--or rather Brighthelmstone, as it was then still known--and thence proceeding to Dieppe. She was thus the first channel steamer to run between these places. It was not until the old stage-coach had given way to the railroad that the numbers of travellers between England and the Continent increased. By June of 1843 the South Eastern Railway had reached Folkestone, and in February of the following year it had also joined Dover. The London, Chatham, and Dover Line was of later date, and did not reach Dover until 1860, where they were able to put to the best use their capable fleet of passenger boats which steamed to Calais. But in 1845 the South Eastern Railway had, like the Chester and Holyhead Line, formed themselves into a separate company, to run a line of steam packets, owing to the fact that the successors to the _Rob Roy_ were deemed unsatisfactory, and endless objections were made by the complaining passengers who reluctantly crossed the choppy waters of the English Channel. Previous to this date the South Eastern Railway were wont to hire steamships to carry their passengers between England and the Continent to Boulogne, Calais, and Ostend. When their line had joined up Dover they started running from there to Calais with their own boats in two hours, twenty-eight minutes, calling at Folkestone on the way for twenty-eight minutes. The first of these steamboats were the _Princess Maud_ and the _Princess Mary_. The run from Dover to Ostend took four and a half hours.