Collins Line
[2][3] Dissatisfied with the dominance of British companies in the transatlantic mail packet trade, the US Congress decided to begin a state-subsidized service of their own in 1845.
The United States Postmaster General Office invited tenders from US-based shipping companies for a service from New York City to ports in Northern Europe.
A five-year tender of carrying mail from New York to Bremen was eventually awarded to the Ocean Steam Navigation Company, led by Edward Mills, which began service in 1846.
[3][4] Collins submitted his ambitious plan to operate a weekly service on the route with five ships superior to those of Cunard in every way.
[4] Additionally, the ships required constant expensive repairs due to structural damage to their wooden hulls caused by their excessively powerful engines.
The annual federal subsidy of $385,000, which its organizers and major investors first believed was sufficient to assure profitability, appeared seriously inadequate.
As a consequence, in early January 1852, the Collins Line, with the support of both the Postmaster-General Nathan K. Hall and the Secretary of the Navy William Alexander Graham, petitioned Congress for a major increase in subsidy.
And now the US government was asking the line to increase the frequency of its winter sailings simply to match the current Cunard schedule between New York and Liverpool.
Discussion of the subsidy persisted until a compromise was hammered out, under which Congress after December 1854 would be free to terminate the increase upon giving Collins six months' notice.
On 20 September 1854, the Arctic left Liverpool with 233 passengers, including Collins' wife, their only daughter 19-year-old Mary Ann and youngest son 15-year-old Henry Coit.
In the fog off Cape Race, Newfoundland, she collided with the 250-ton French iron propeller ship SS Vesta, and was holed in three places.
Forty-five passengers and 141 crew members were lost, including her captain, Asa Eldridge, who had previously worked for Collins as commander of the packet ship Roscius of the Dramatic Line.
The consensus at the time was that the missing steamer had probably collided with an iceberg and sunk: Eldridge would have been desperate to stay ahead of the Persia, the Cunard Line’s first iron-hulled steamer, which was due to leave Liverpool a few days after the Pacific on her maiden voyage, and was herself damaged by ice floes on that voyage.
In August 1857, shortly before the onset of a brief but severe depression, Congress finally gave the required six-month notice of a subsidy reduction to the pre-1852 amount of $385,000 yearly and for only twenty trips.
[9] By the next February, the Collins Line had suspended operations, and on 1 April 1858, in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, its remaining vessels were sold at auction.
