The company was founded and headed by James Baines and Thomas Miller Mackay with two junior partners, Joseph Greaves and John Taylor.

[3] In 1851 James Baines & Co. of Liverpool entered the packet trade using the same name and flag as the New York company, despite its protests.

Thus, for about twenty years, two "Black Ball lines" under separate ownership were operating in direct competition on the transatlantic packet trade.

As the demand for passenger transport to Melbourne, Australia fueled by the 1850s gold rush grew,[5] Baines commissioned a famous American shipbuilder, Donald McKay to build four clippers for the line.

[9] Some of the clippers Baines was able to buy at a very low price following the Panic of 1857 and the onset of the American Civil War.

On one instance, there were documented 26 dead of the 460 passengers on board of Rockhampton, when she arrived in Keppel Bay on 12 October 1863 after the 116-day voyage from Liverpool.