From the time the _Great Western_ was launched, steamships sailing
between American and English ports became an established institution.
Soon after the _Great Western's_ first voyage a sturdy New England
Quaker from Nova Scotia named Samuel Cunard went over to London to try
and interest the British government in a plan to establish a line of
steamships between the two countries. He succeeded in raising 270,000
pounds, and built the _Britannia_, the first Cunard vessel to cross the
Atlantic. This was in 1840. As ships go now she was a small craft
indeed. Her gross tonnage was 1,154 and her horse power 750. She carried
only first-class passengers and these only to the limit of one hundred.
There was not much in the way of accommodation as the quarters were
cramped, the staterooms small and the sanitation and ventilation
defective. It was on the _Britannia_ that Charles Dickens crossed
over to America in 1842 and he has given us in his usual style a pen
picture of his impressions aboard. He stated that the saloon reminded
him of nothing so much as of a hearse, in which a number of half-starved
stewards attempted to warm themselves by a glimmering stove, and that
the staterooms so-called were boxes in which the bunks were shelves
spread with patches of filthy bed-clothing, somewhat after the style
of a mustard plaster. This criticism must be taken with a little
reservation. Dickens was a pessimist and always censorious and as he
had been feted and feasted with the fat of the land, he expected that
he should have been entertained in kingly quarters on shipboard. But
because things did not come up to his expectations he dipped his pen
in vitriol and began to criticise.

At any rate the _Britannia_ in her day was looked upon as the _ne plus
ultra_ in naval architecture, the very acme of marine engineering. The
highest speed she developed was eight and one-half knots or about nine