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It was so ingenious, yet simple; and I confess I laughed over my first skiff "on the stalk," and fell to bantering the Martians, asking whether it was a good season for navies, whether their Cunarders were spreading nicely, if they could give me a pinch of barge seed, or a yacht in bud to show to my friends at home. But those lazy people took the matter seriously enough.
Aided by the Government to the extent of $385,000 a year as subsidy, he put afloat the four magnificent steamers, Atlantic, Pacific, Baltic, and Arctic, which were a day faster than the Cunarders in crossing, and reduced the voyage to nine and ten days.
The glory of Tyre and Sidon arose from the purple droppings of a little dog's mouth who had been eating shell fish. The great Cunarders came out of the lid of Stephenson's family kettle. A soldier happened to tell me that his mother had applied Sypher's Cure to his blistered heels and that was the origin of the scheme."
The Parsons turbine-engines have been used to propel torpedo-boats, fast yachts, and vessels built to carry passengers across the English Channel, and recently it has been reported that two new transatlantic Cunarders are to be equipped with them.
But Halifax was always treated as a port of call. The American ports were the real destination. And after 1867 the Cunarders became practically an Anglo-American, not an Anglo-Canadian, line. During their connection with Canada, partially renewed in the present century, the Cunards never did anything really original.
I myself prefer rather the sentiment of the good old Euston station, which continues for you the feeling of arrival in England, and keeps you in the glow of landing that you have, or had in the days when you always landed in Liverpool, and the constant Cunarders and Inmans ignored the upstart pretensions of Southampton and Plymouth to be ports of entry from the United States.
In the ranks of steamer chairs people lay like mummies in their dense wrappings; in the music-room the little children of travel discussed the different lines of steamers on which they had crossed, and babes of five and seven disputed about the motion on the Cunarders and White Stars; their nurses tried in vain to still them in behalf of older passengers trying to write letters there.
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 the latter innovation, however, she was not the pioneer. Up to 1847 the British lines monopolized the transatlantic service.
I went to Canada by way of New York, partly because the big Cunarders are comfortable steamers, partly because I find New York an agreeable city. I have several friends there and I like the life of the place for a fortnight at a time. I do not know whether I should like it for a longer time because I have never had money enough to live in New York for more than a fortnight.
Within a few months after the start of the line the Cunard Company had cut freight rates from seven pounds ten shillings per ton to four pounds. So, while the Collins ships continued steadily to outsail the Cunarders and got the bulk of the passenger traffic, the Cunarders got most of the freighting. Moreover, the Collins ships were far more expensive to run.
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