The following is the most generally-accepted story of James Baines’ first venture in ship-owning. In 1851 a dirty-looking ship with stumpy masts and apple-cheeked bows lay in the Queen’s Dock, Liverpool, with a broom at her masthead, thus indicating that she was for sale. This ship, which seafaring men contemptuously compared to a barrel of pork, had been cheaply built at Miramichi, and was evidently going for a song. James Baines scraped together what little money he had and bought her, sent her out to the Colonies and made a good profit on her; and this was the humble beginning of the great Black Ball Line, which in 1860 possessed 86 ships and employed 300 officers and 3000 seamen. How James Baines came to take the house-flag and name of the well-known line of American packet ships, which had been running between New York and Liverpool since 1816, I have been unable to find out. One cannot but think, however, that this must often have occasioned confusion in Liverpool business circles. James Baines’ success was, as I have said, meteoric, and to the end of the fifties he flourished exceedingly. He lived in a beautiful house, where he dispensed princely hospitality, drove a four-in-hand, and thought nothing of buying five ships in one day at Kellock’s Auction Rooms. But in the year 1860 his star began to set. Like many another, he was tempted by the steam-kettle, with the result that he amalgamated with Gibbs, Bright & Co., who had already deserted sail for that doubtful investment, auxiliary steam, and had started a service with the ill-fated _Royal Charter_ and the equally well-known _Great Britain_. The packets and steamers of the combine provided a service to Australia from Liverpool twice a month, but it is doubtful if the experiment proved a success financially. The chief cause, however, of James Baines’ downfall was the failure of Barnard’s Bank. At the same time it must be remembered that his soft-wood ships, many of which were old Yankee clippers already past their prime when he bought them, were becoming more and more strained and water-soaked, with the result that his repair bill was ever on the increase, and this just when other firms were building iron ships on purpose to compete with his wooden ones. The two last ships, in which he had any interest, were the _Great Eastern_ and the _Three Brothers_, once upon a time Vanderbilt’s yacht and famous for its unsuccessful chase of the _Alabama_, now a hulk at Gibraltar. Misfortunes, once they begin, have a habit of crowding upon one, and poor old James Baines, for some years before his death, had to depend for his subsistence on the charity of his friends. Indeed he was absolutely penniless when he died of dropsy on 8th March, 1889, in a common Liverpool lodging house. He was only 66 years of age at his death. Yet it will be a very long time before he and his celebrated ships are forgotten in Liverpool. In the Black Ball Line I served my time. Hurrah! for the Black Ball Line.