'Nearly this time two years I left Melbourne for Liverpool in the vessel. She had--and, in most particulars, deserved it--the reputation of being the finest ship that ever came to Hobson's Bay. The "Great Britain," belonging to the same line, was of larger burden, and of much higher steam capacity; but among her splendid performances there was no record of a passage from England to Australia in fifty-nine days. This extraordinary run the "Royal Charter" had made, and a reputation had in consequence attached to her which always filled her cabins with home-bound colonists within ten days or a fortnight of her arrival at Melbourne. As I am writing this I am in utter ignorance of the details connected with the loss of the vessel; and it would be a mere impertinence were I to suggest a cause for the catastrophe. This I must say, however--I feel bound to say it, for the sake of all those who go down to the sea in ships--that if the "Royal Charter" had not made such rapid passages, lives lost on board _before_ this final casualty would certainly not have been sacrificed. Let me, before proceeding further, explain what I mean. It is a practice with more than one large shipping firm, like that to which the "Charter" belonged, to give very heavy rewards to those captains who are enabled to make "the voyage"--that is, the passage out and home--within a specially limited time; let us say five months. Captain Taylor, of the "Royal Charter," told me himself that his owners had promised him five hundred pounds whenever he made the journey from Liverpool to Melbourne and back in one hundred and fifty days. The consequence of this arrangement was, that _speed_ rather than _safety_ became the characteristic of Captain Taylor's command. It would be cruel to make this statement if I were not prepared to prove it; but when I add that the "Charter" never made a voyage without an accident of some kind or other occurring--that when I came from Melbourne in her, her gear was so defective that a yard-arm fell, killing one man and wounding others, the very day we left Hobson's Bay, and that throughout the passage her rudder was so faulty that we had to slacken sail whenever the ship attained a speed of twelve knots,--the veracity (or taste) of my assertion cannot be questioned. Everything was sacrificed to speed: a quick passage seemed to be the sole aim of the captain--_was_, in fact, the sole aim, as, to conclude these prefatory remarks, one little circumstance will show. When I came home in the ship, she happened, from a stress of foul winds, to make an extraordinarily long run. Well, a month before we arrived in port, we were placed on short allowance of food. Rapidity was so relied on that only sixty or seventy days' provisions (instead of, as the Shipping Act provides, one hundred and twenty) had been put on board when we left Melbourne!