A Quarter of a century had elapsed since the launch of Bell’s COMET on the Clyde. In the interval, all the chief ports of Great Britain and Ireland, and several of the continental ports, had been connected by steampacket services. So early as 1828 it had been proposed to establish steam communication between the West of Ireland and America, and an Act of Parliament for incorporating the Valentia Transatlantic Steam Navigation Company was obtained. The proposed capital was £24,000, in shares of £50 each. The first steamer was estimated to cost £21,000. She was to be a vessel of about 800 tons burthen, driven by engines of 200 h.p., and was expected to make six round voyages per annum. She was to accommodate 50 cabin and 50 steerage passengers, and to carry 200 tons cargo, exclusive of bunkers. It appears from the following extract from the “Liverpool Albion” of the 14th December, 1835, that although the projectors of the Valentia Company advertised in 1828 that the company was “to commence immediate operations,” its first sailing had not taken place seven years later. The scheme fell through for want of support, but in 1835 it was started afresh in conjunction with the railway from London, the Post Office Packets, and the Valentia Railway. The extract is valuable also as containing Dr. Lardner’s famous dictum concerning the possibility of direct steam navigation between Liverpool and New York:— “Steam Communication with America. “Dr. Lardner then proceeded to observe that one of the grandest projects which had ever occupied the human mind was at present in the process of actual accomplishment. He meant that of constructing a great highway for steam intercourse between New York and London—between the capital of the New World and that of the Old. Part of the highway was in process of formation. It consisted of several stages—that of the railroad from London to Birmingham; that from Birmingham to Liverpool, and the steam intercourse with Dublin; but there was another stage—that from Dublin to Valentia, which had as yet hardly been thought of. Ireland was a country which, with all her political disadvantages, was blest by nature with a vast number of physical advantages, and amongst the rest he might reckon a vast number of excellent harbours. No country in the world could boast of so many fine and spacious ports, bays and roadsteads. She had many harbours on her west coast which would serve admirably as stations for steam conveyance across the Atlantic; but Valentia had been selected as the extreme westerly point suitable for that purpose. It was a fine anchoring ground by an island of that name on the coast of Munster. The distance from Dublin to this point was under 200 miles, which might be traversed in about 8 hours. The nearest point on the continent of North America to this point of Ireland was St. John’s in Newfoundland. The distance between the two was about 1,900 miles;