Thus the famous Cunard Company was founded. Cunard came to London, Burns to Glasgow and MacIver to Liverpool, and to these three men we owe a great deal of the subsequent development of Atlantic shipping and the progress of the Mercantile Marine. The company was at first known as “The British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company,” and in the year 1840 these four wooden ships were built on the Clyde and supplied with engines by Robert Napier. The first was the _Britannia_, followed by the _Acadia_, _Caledonia_ and _Columbia_. They were propelled by paddle-wheels, carried 115 cabin passengers and 225 tons of cargo, and they were all approximately 1154 tons, and 207 feet long. Regardless of superstition, _Britannia_ began her maiden voyage on a Friday, which happened to be July 4, a day which commemorated another kind of Independence. After a fine trip of eleven days and four hours she reached Halifax, and thence proceeded to Boston, just a fortnight plus eight hours out from Liverpool. The citizens of Boston celebrated the historic event with banqueting and enthusiasm, and thus was forged one of those links which have bound the two nations together for so many years ever since. Following the precedent of the Cunard Company, the Royal Mail Line in March 1840, obtained a contract to carry the mails in at least fourteen “good substantial and efficient steam vessels” to the West Indies, whither previously the mails had been carried in gun-brigs. The contract was for ten years from December 1841. All the ships were named after British rivers, and they used to depart from Falmouth, the voyage taking from seventeen to eighteen days. It is evidence of the great spread of shipbuilding already that these fourteen ships were built at Northfleet on the Thames, Greenock, Dumbarton, Leith and even Cowes. The fleet cost about £1,000,000 sterling, but the Government gave them a subsidy of £240,000 a year. The undertaking was very successful, and presently Southampton took the place of Falmouth. Then in 1851 the Royal Mail Line extended their service to South America. Gradually the heavy subsidy dropped to £85,000 a year, and was finally abolished in June 1905. As further evidence of the solid belief which the steamship had now won, it is only necessary to refer to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, which received its charter in 1840. It is now amalgamated with the Royal Mail Line, but in those days, whilst the latter served the east side of South America, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company served the Pacific coast of that continent by going round through the Magellan Straits. Their two ships the _Chile_ and _Peru_ were in fact the first two steamers which ever passed through those straits. What a wonderful change since the time of Drake’s ships!