His successor, Isma'il Pasha, restarted the venture in May 1863 in the hopes of creating a merchant marine for the modernising Egyptian nation.
In 1894, the Egyptian government ordered the Medjidieh to make a large reduction in expenditure, which they achieved by eliminating some of the destination ports and closing local agencies.
They received an operating subsidy from the Egyptian Government and undertook to continue the existing mail services, with an exclusive concession for commercial passenger traffic on those routes.
[4] In the first year of operations the company began a programme of upgrading and expanding the fleet as well as restoring services to the full previous range of ports.
[12] The same year, on 18 September Charkieh was wrecked in Greece, with a loss of 49 lives,[13] which prompted writer and activist Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to take the matter up in The Times.