The two finest ships in the Mercantile Marine of 1851 were the East Indiamen _Marlborough_ and _Blenheim_, owned by Messrs. T. & W. Smith, who had begun running ships to the East soon after the monopoly had gone, in competition with Green and Wigram. It was the gold-diggings of South Australia and Victoria from 1851 onwards which made a sudden demand for shipping passengers out from England: in fact by 1853 the demand was greater than the supply. But the only suitable vessels available for first- and second-class passengers were these famous Blackwall frigates, and the Greens were thus in a position to transfer some of their large fleet from the Calcutta to the Australian trade. Money Wigram, not having yet become a large shipowner, began to build for this Melbourne trade. The Blackwall frigates were devoid of sheer, had long poops, short maindecks, and were beautifully built of picked teak and oak. Green’s ships were not as sharp-ended as Smith’s or Wigram’s, but Somes’ and Dunbar’s were real old-fashioned, clumsy-bowed craft. The fastest of Green’s ships were the _Alnwick Castle_, _Clarence_, _Windsor Castle_ and _Anglesey_. The fastest of Wigram’s fleet was the _Kent_. The old East India Company’s influence for a time so dominated these Blackwall frigates that dignity, comfort and safety first were rather the mottoes of the fleet, unlike the clipper ships, always snugging down for the night. Some of the best-known Green ships were the 835-ton _Madagascar_, built in 1837, the 852-ton _Earl of Hardwicke_, already mentioned, built in 1838, but afterwards wrecked on the South African coast in 1863; the _Owen Glendower_, built in 1839, the _Agincourt_ (958 tons), in 1841, the _Prince of Wales_ (1223 tons), in 1842, the _Monarch_ (1444 tons), in 1844, the _Alfred_ (1291 tons), in 1845, the _Barham_ (934 tons), in 1846. The _Prince of Wales_ and _Queen_ of 1842 were both 1223-ton ships, the former built for Green and the latter for Wigram at the Blackwall yard. Pierced for fifty guns and flush-decked, they were ready with their crew of seventy-eight each to be turned into naval corvettes at once.