The contract was for ten years, and to take effect from December 1st, 1841. The fourteen ships were all named after British rivers, and many readers will be aware that this custom of the company has continued ever since, although in some cases the names of foreign rivers have also been thus employed. Some of these vessels were built at Northfleet on the Thames, others (including the _Teviot_ and _Clyde_) were built at Greenock, others at Dumbarton, Leith, and Cowes. The Lords of the Admiralty stipulated that the vessels should be built under their supervision, and a naval officer was put in charge of the mails on each steamer, and carried out a sort of supervision of the ship’s affairs, a boat’s crew being always at his service when the mails were being taken aboard or disembarked. The illustration facing page 112 shows the launch of the _Forth_ at Leith in 1841. This picture, which is taken from a contemporary painting, is worthy of perusal, as showing the close resemblance between the mercantile marine and naval architecture of the period. Strength rather than slim beauty, massiveness rather than fineness, formed the keynote both in the steam and sailing ships of that time. In the same year had already been launched the _Thames_ from Northfleet, and in the following year that vessel inaugurated this new service, setting forth, like the older packets, from Falmouth. The voyage from there to the West Indies took about eighteen days, but exceptional runs were done in seventeen days. This new steamship departure was an undoubted success, and the Admiralty admitted that even the Government, with all its naval resources, could not have succeeded so well as this private company in getting together and ready for sea in so short a time so many large and well-equipped new steamers. Financially this meant a very large outlay, and there was not much less than a million of money expended on this first fleet. It should be stated, however, that the Government subsidised the concern by a grant of £240,000 per annum. Presently Falmouth gave way to Southampton as the headquarters of the Royal Mail fleet. To-day there are so many big liners calling at the Hampshire port, and there is at all times of the day so continuous a procession of all kinds of large steamships, that it is difficult to realise that in those days this was comparatively a small port.