The Collins Line ceased to exist a few years after these serious disasters, but the Cunard became more firmly established than ever, and entered on that career of prosperity which has been the most remarkable of any in the long list of steam-ship lines. Its fleet consisted of forty-nine vessels in 1875, running not merely on the Atlantic service, but to Mediterranean and other ports. A competent authority puts the money value of the ships at about seven millions sterling. In the ocean line the crews are engaged for a single voyage out and home. The company shipped and discharged during the year ending July 1st, 1872, 43,000 men, which means that they continuously employed about 8,600 persons on their ships. About 1,500 men find regular employment in loading and unloading the steam-ships, and from 500 to 1,500 more are engaged at the docks of the company in Liverpool in fitting and refitting these vessels. “Hence the company, although a private enterprise in the hands of only three families, is entitled to rank with the great railway and other public companies as an employer of labour.”(34) The Cunard Company, in 1861, enrolled a regiment of Volunteer Artillery (the 11th Lancashire) 500 strong, composed entirely of their own _employés_, and they have always shown much public spirit in Liverpool in the promotion of schools, asylums, and other provident and charitable institutions for the seamen’s benefit. During the Crimean war, and in 1861, when the friendly relations between Great Britain and America were put in jeopardy by the forcible arrest of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, when on board the Royal Mail steamer _Trent_, the resources of the company were put into requisition for the conveyance of troops and stores. Their two largest ships, the _Bothnia_ and _Scythia_, each of 4,535 tons burden, have saloons where 300 persons can dine at one time, while their decks afford an unbroken promenade, for passengers, of 425 feet. [Illustration: THE CUNARD SCREW STEAM-SHIP “BOTHNIA.”]