As two of their own steamers were unavailable, the one being lost and the other disabled, the Directors found it necessary to take up outside steamers. They therefore chartered the PRINCE ALBERT, and purchased the ADRIATIC, one of the latest and most famous of the Collins Line. She appears to have been the only vessel belonging to the Company capable of carrying out the terms of the Government Contract. She completed the run from Galway to St. John’s in the specified time, six days, and to New York in one day fifteen hours and fifteen minutes less than contract time. On her return she made the passage from St. John’s to Galway in five days nineteen hours and three quarters, the shortest passage on record from port to port across the Atlantic. It is impossible to state what would have been the result had the steamers built for the Company been equal to the ADRIATIC, but she was secured too late to retrieve the fortunes of the Company. Unable under such adverse circumstances to raise fresh capital, the managers of the Company had no course left but to abandon their undertaking, and they terminated their contract in May, 1861. This unfortunate enterprise entailed a loss to the Government of about £15,000, while it is probable that the loss incurred by the shareholders of the Company was not less than £150,000 during the short period of its existence. CHAPTER XVIII. The ORION wrecked off Portpatrick, 1850.—The steamer NEPTUNE.—A second “Grace Darling,” 1852. One of the most convincing proofs of the splendid management of the several steamship companies which trade between Liverpool and Glasgow, of the skill and honest workmanship put into the vessels, and of the great care exercised by the officers who navigate these ships, is the fact that for upwards of eighty years there has been but one disaster accompanied by loss of life on this station.