rds, too, than anything
previously known, the _Sirius_ crossing in 1838 in nineteen days, and
the _Great Western_ in fifteen. In the meantime shipbuilders on both
sides of the Atlantic were studying the steamboat problem and busy
brains in Nova Scotia and on the Clyde were working out an answer to the
puzzle. One of the most alert of these brains belonged to Samuel Cunard,
the founder of the steamship line that has since become world famous. In
May, 1840, through his instrumentality, the _Unicorn_ set out from
England for Boston arriving in the harbor June third after a voyage of
sixteen days. When we reflect that she was a wooden side-wheeler, not
much larger than one of our tugboats, we marvel that she ever put in her
appearance. Tidings of her proposed trip had already preceded her, and
when after much anxious watching she was sighted there was the greatest
enthusiasm along the water front, the over-zealous populace who wished
to give her a royal welcome setting off a six-pounder in her honor that
shattered to atoms most of her stained glass as she tied up at the
dock."

His audience laughed.

"You see," continued the capitalist, "the ship came in answer to a
circular sent out by our government to various shipbuilders asking bids
from swift and reliable boats to carry our mails to England. Cunard
immediately saw the commercial advantages of such an opportunity, and
not having money enough to back the venture himself the Halifax man went
to Scotland where he met Robert Napier, a person who like himself had
had wide experience in shipping affairs. Both men were enthusiastic over
the project; before long the money necessary for the undertaking was
raised, and the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet
Company, with a line of four ships, was awarded the United States
Government contract. These ships were very significantly named: the
_Britannia_ in honor of England, the _Arcadia_ as a compliment to Mr.
Cunard's Nova Scotia home, the _Caledonia_ in memory of Napier's Scotch
ancestry, and the _Columbia_ out of regard to America. And in passing it
is rather interesting to recall that in homage to these pioneer ships it
has become a tradition of the Cunard Line to use names that terminate in
the letter _a_ for all the ships that have followed them. For, you must
remember, it was this modest group of steam packets that were the
ancestors of such magnificent boats as the _Mauretania_ and
_Lusitania_."

"There w