Messrs. Bilbe & Perry built one of the earliest composite clippers, the _Red Riding Hood_. She was launched in 1857 some six years before the first of the composite tea clippers. They also went in for iron ships at an early date, their first iron ship, the _White Eagle_, being built as far back as 1855. But owing chiefly to a very ill-advised strike of shipwrights, the Thames builders found themselves unable to compete with the North in iron shipbuilding and the Clyde took the trade which should have belonged to the Thames. Thus 1866 saw the last of the Thames composites to be built in the Nelson Dock when _Argonaut_ was launched for the Adelaide trade. However, Messrs. Anderson, Anderson & Co. meant to have the fastest ships procurable, and gave Hall, of Aberdeen, Steele, of Greenock and the Sunderland shipyards each a chance to turn them out a flyer. =The “Orient.”= The _Orient_, the pioneer of the line, was launched at Rotherhithe in 1853, and measured:— Registered tonnage 1033 tons. Length 184.4 feet. Beam 31.7 „ Depth 21.1 „ She was built to participate in the gold boom to Melbourne, and was fitted to carry passengers under a poop 61 feet long. However she was not destined to start life on the Australian run, for she had barely been launched before she was taken up by the Government for the transport of troops to the Crimea. At the landing at Alma in September, 1854, she was transport No. 78, carrying the 88th Connaught Rangers. She managed to ride out the gale of the 14th November, 1854, off Balaclava, in which 34 of the Allied ships were wrecked and over 1000 lives lost. And in October, 1855, we find her acting as a hospital ship during the expedition against Kinburn and Odessa. In 1856 she returned to London and was then put on the berth for Adelaide. She sailed from Plymouth under Captain A. Lawrence on the 5th July, 1856, with a full passenger list, and hence forward was a favourite passenger ship in the South Australian trade. “Orient’s” Outward Passages. The following table gives her time out for twenty-one voyages under the Orient flag. She generally took about 95 days coming home _via_ the Cape, calling in at Capetown and St. Helena, as it was the custom with ships carrying passengers. [Illustration: “ORIENT.” Arriving at Gibraltar with Troops from the Crimea. _From a lithograph._]