On the 24th September, 1842, the P. & O. Company despatched its first steamer to India _via_ the Cape of Good Hope. She was the paddle-steamer HINDOSTAN, of 2,017 tons gross and of 520 horse power. On her arrival at Calcutta she was placed on the service between Calcutta, Madras, Ceylon and Suez. Other steamers were despatched speedily from England, and in 1844 the company was in a position to enter into another contract with the Government for a monthly service from Ceylon, to Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong. For the premier service (Suez-Calcutta) the company received £115,000 per annum, or at the rate of 20s. per mile, and for the Ceylon-Hongkong service £45,000, or at the rate of about 12s. per mile. In connection with the Eastern services, coaling stations, docks, store establishments, and in such places as Suez and Aden, even fresh-water supplies had to be, and were, provided and organised. At this period, and until the completion of the Railway from Alexandria to Suez, the passengers and cargo carried by the P. & O. steamers were conveyed across Egypt in a somewhat primitive manner. The Mahmoudieh Canal enabled the company to transport its passengers and cargo from Alexandria to the Nile, whence they proceeded by steamer to Cairo, and thence through the desert on the backs of camels, a distance of less than 100 miles, to Suez. As it was notorious that the mail service between Suez and Bombay was conducted by the East India Company at a cost of upwards of 30s. per mile by steamers vastly inferior in speed and accommodation to the P. & O. steamers, which maintained the mail services to India and the principal ports of China at an average rate of about 17s. per mile, the public naturally demanded that the Suez-Bombay service should be taken out of the control of the East India Company, and placed in the hands of those competent to work it more efficiently and with greater economy. The demands of the public, although confirmed by the Parliamentary Committee of 1851, were successfully resisted by the Court of Directors until 1854, and it is questionable if even then, they would have given up the service if (in consequence of the East India Company having no steamer ready for them at Suez) the Bombay mails had not been lost in a native sailing craft into which they had been transferred at Aden. The P. & O. Company were applied to by the Government, and undertook this service for the sum of £24,700 per annum, or at the rate of 6s. 2d. per mile, resulting in a decreased expenditure of about £80,000 per annum, as compared with the expense incurred by the far less efficient East Indian Navy.