At the same time Messrs. Elder & Co. effected an extraordinary improvement in the TASMANIAN, an iron screw steamer the Royal Mail Co. had purchased from the unfortunate European and Australian Steam Navigation Co. This vessel was fitted with compound engines, and on her first voyage afterwards from Southampton to St. Thomas, occupying 14 days 2 hours, she consumed 466 tons of coal, against her former consumption of 1,088 tons on a voyage occupying 14 days 13 hours. Since that date all the additions to the Company’s fleet have been screw steamers, and it now (1903) consists of 22 ocean steamers, with a gross tonnage of 87,855 tons, in addition to 9 coast steamers employed as feeders to the mail services. In the first year of the present century, Messrs. Elder, Dempster & Co. established a service of mail steamers between Bristol and Jamaica. A detailed account of this service, which is known as the Imperial Direct West India Mail Service, Limited, will be found in the second part of this volume. CHAPTER XV. International rivalry in the Transatlantic.—The Collins Line and the Cunard Co. For upwards of nine years Great Britain had held a monopoly of the transatlantic steamship business. America could and did build sailing vessels that were unsurpassed by those belonging to any other nation; her Baltimore clippers, Boston packets, and New York liners were all of them vessels of the highest class and reputation. But apparently Americans could neither build, nor own ocean steamers that were capable of successfully competing with British owned steamships. At least, it is a matter of history that from 1838 to 1847 all the steamships that crossed the North Atlantic sailed under the British flag, with one exception.