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The Cunard Steamship Co, the owner of the Mauretania, occupies the leading position among the great steamship lines' plying between Eu- rope and America. To sketch the history of the famous company is practically to tell the story of the evo- lution of Atlantic shipping, for since it commenced a regular service of Royal Mail steamships across the At- TAE Marine REVIEW . knots per hour, and the coal con-. sumption was calculated at 38 tons per day. On the first trip the Brit- annia accomplished the journey from Liverpool to Boston in 14 days, 8 hours, carrying 63 passengers. The enthusiasm of the welcome accorded to the vessel by the American people on her maiden voyage may be gauged by the fact that Samuel Cunard, who 37 CUNARD LINER MAURETANIA gone to make up the Cunard fleet since the time of the Britannia to the advent of the Mauretania, presents a reliab'e index to the development in naval architecture during the last sixty-seven years. In 1862, their iron paddle steamer Scotia, of 3,871 tons gross register, with engines of 4,900 H. P., steamed 14.4 knots, and re- duced the record from Liverpool to lantic, in 1840, it has uninterruptedly occupied a premier position in the world's mercantile marine. The Cunard service was inaugurated by the wooden paddle steamer Brit- annia, a vessel which at that time marked an advance onanything afloat, and which the press of that day al- luded to as the far-famed fast Amer- ican steamer Britannia. She was 207 ft. long, 34 ft. 4 in. broad, and 24 ft. 4 in. deep. She had a tonnage bur- den of 1,154; her indicated horsepow- er was 740; and she was registered _ to carry 115 cabin passengers, no .ac- commodations being at that time con- sidered necessary for second-class or steerage. The average speed was 8/7 CUNARD TURBINE LINER MAURETANIA, conceived the idea of a regular steam- ship service, is said to have received 1,873 invitations to dinner within 24 hours of the vessel's arrival at Bos- ton. Lovers of Charles Dickens will recall that it. was in the Britannia the novelist crossed the Atlantic in 1842; and the opening chapter of his "American Notes" is devoted to a de- lightfully humorous description of the stateroom which he and his wife occupied--'"the pleasantest and most facetious and capital contrivance pos- sible," to have had, which one inch larger "would have been quite a dis- agreeable and deplorable state of things." : A study of the steamers which have New York to 8 days, 22 hours. Five years afterwards, the Cunard liner Russia, of 2,960 gross tons, demon- strated the superiority of the screw propeller as compared with the pad- dle as a means of propulsion for ocean-going vessels, by steaming 13 knots on a coal consumption of only 90 tons per day; while the Scotia, with her paddles, was burning 159 tons per day to attain the same speed. The Servia, one of the earliest ves- sels to be built of steel, was launched in 1881; and the ever-popular Umbria and Etruria, each capable of. main- taining a speed of 20 knots, followed in 1884. The Umbria and her sister were the last large vessels of the