The Hamburg-America Line at the time war broke out was the largest merchant steamship enterprise in the world, owning between 400 and 500 ships, with seventy-five distinct services, its vessels calling at 400 of the leading ports of the world and carrying over 400,000 passengers a year. It was thus an enormous corporation, that makes the old Honourable East India Company look ridiculous. As a means of providing national wealth and the ready transportation of German goods into the remotest corners of the globe it was invaluable. It was founded on May 27, 1847, with a capital of 465,000 marks, and it ordered three sailing ships in England of about 717 tons each, which carried a score of first-class passengers and a couple of hundred emigrants and a little freight. These were full-rigged, three-masted vessels, with heavy quarters, the white riband and painted square ports and the high-steeved bowsprit so familiar in English shipping. The average trip from Hamburg to New York took forty days, and twenty-nine days on the return voyage. These three ships were the _Deutschland_, _Nordamerika_ and _Rhein_. In 1854 the company had already prospered so much, thanks largely to the emigrant traffic, that it decided to go in for steam. The screw was replacing the paddle in British ships and iron was being used instead of wood. They therefore gave an order to Caird of Greenock to build a couple of 2026-ton screw steamers having a speed of about twelve knots. The first of these was the _Borussia_, a three-masted vessel with sails, clipper bow and one funnel. She made her appearance in 1856. Hitherto British and other seamen had been largely employed for crews, but now only Germans, dressed in uniform, and disciplined after the custom of a man-of-war, were allowed. The German Mercantile Marine was beginning to exist by itself. The best speed obtained with these ships was sixteen days, and in 1858 came the _Saxonia_ and _Austria_, which reduced the passage eastward-bound to a little over twelve days, the firm’s fleet now consisting of eight sailing ships and four steamers. Presently the former were all sold, and a fortnightly service to New York was instituted, and other steamships were added. At the outbreak of the American Civil War this line was carrying the United States mails and calling at Southampton, and, after leaving the English port, New York was reached in ten days. By the early ’seventies the fleet already numbered twenty-five steamships, and was also running to the Spanish Main, Mexico and West Indies.