e, and which could be equally well done and at less expense if
mails were sent out by all steamers engaged in the trade, each receiving
a certain amount percentage on the letters they carried."[Z] Although
the fact was brought out in the testimony that the Great Western Company
had offered to perform the service on practically the same basis as the
Cunard associates, and that afterwards the Great Western had proposed to
do it at half the subsidy to the Cunarders, the investigating committee
sustained the Admiralty's action.[AA]

The Great Western Company overcame the advantage of the Cunarders in the
latter's high mail subsidy by increased enterprise and superior
management; and prospered. In 1843 they launched the _Great Britain_,
the largest and finest steamship up to that period built for overseas
service.[AB] She was, moreover, distinguished as the first liner to be
built of iron instead of wood, and to be propelled by the screw instead
of the paddle-wheel. In the latter innovation, however, she was not the
pioneer. Again the Americans were first in the application of the
auxiliary screw to ocean navigation,[AC] as they had been first in
despatching a steamer across the Atlantic.

The initial transatlantic subsidy to the Cunard Company was followed up
in 1840 and 1841 with contracts for steam mail-carriage to the West
Indies and South American ports.[AD] The first (1840) went to the Royal
Mail Steam Packet Company, for the West Indian service, the mail subsidy
fixed at two hundred and forty thousand pounds a year;[AE] the second
(1841), to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. The latter enterprise
was promoted by an American,[AF] after he had failed to obtain support
in his own country[AG] for a project to establish an American steamship
line to ports along the west coast of South America, a field in which
American sailing ships had long been preeminent.[AH]

Up to 1847 the British lines monopolized the transatlantic service. Then
the situation became enlivened by the advent of competing American
steamships subsidized by the United States Government, with high-paying
mail contracts. The first of these was the New York, Havre, and Bremen
line starting in 1847; the next, the celebrated Collins Line between New
York and Liverpool, underway in 1850. The competing vessels were
American-built, wooden side-wheelers; those of the Collins Line superior
in equipment and in passenger accommodations, and faster sailers, than