Because of their financial difficulties the company organized a separate corporation to build and run ships to Havre. The _Humbolt_ and the _Franklin_ were put on this route in 1849. The _Humbolt_ was wrecked at Halifax, December 5, 1853, and the _Franklin_ stranded on Montauk Point, July 17, 1854. The _Arago_ and _Fulton_, built to replace these two, were somewhat better than any ocean-going steamships theretofore built in the United States, and they were able to continue the service until the government chartered them for use in the Civil War (1861). The two Bremen ships were laid up after their subsidy ceased--1859. All six of these ships used by this corporation were slow as well as expensive to operate. The time used in the Bremen passage was about fourteen days; that to Havre, twelve. The Collins Line (New York and Liverpool U. S. Mail Steamship Company), was the most famous of the subsidized lines. E. K. Collins was a Truro, Cape Cod, boy, who, at the age of fifteen (1817), became a clerk to a New York merchant. Five years later he was sent to sea as a supercargo, and a little later he became a partner in the business. His first memorable stroke of business was made in 1825, when cotton took a sudden rise in the Liverpool market. The news of the rise reached New York on the day that the regular Charleston, South Carolina, packet was to sail, and a number of New York merchants took passage on the ship, intending to buy all the cotton in Charleston before the news of the rise could be learned there. As the packet passed the bar at Sandy Hook, bound out, the merchants on her deck saw a pilot-boat, with young Collins on her deck, head away down the coast; and with one accord they made jeering remarks at the idea of a little schooner trying to beat the regular packet in such a race. But when they reached the Charleston bar they met the boat with Collins on board coming out. He had bought all the cotton. With money made in that deal and with some obtained by marrying a rich wife, Collins started the New Orleans packet line, and another line thence to Tampico. These having proved successful, he then established the famous Dramatic Line to Liverpool. In 1840, Collins said:-- "There is no longer chance for enterprise with sails. It is steam that must win the day. I will build steamers that shall make the passage from New York to Europe in ten days and less."