The agreement, set up at the completion of the railway line in 1869, had proved effective until 1873, when Pacific Mail, after commissioning new vessels, decided that their passengers could travel more profitably by the isthmus of Panama rather than take the transcontinental train.

He had a meeting in October 1874 with the chairman of the White Star Line, Thomas Henry Ismay, which lead to a two-year charter agreement for three vessels: two cargo-liners, the SS Gaelic and the SS Belgic; also the RMS Oceanic, the first luxury liner of the company, which had become redundant on the North Atlantic route.

This success laid the foundations of a long collaboration between the two companies, White Star supplying British officers while O&O provided the Chinese crews.

[3] The success of the first voyage of the Oceanic was enough to allow the company to achieve its goal even before the ship had docked in San Francisco, Pacific Mail recognized defeat and sign a contract with the O&O to operate a joint service on the route.

In the following years, however, the managers of Pacific Mail expressed discontent with the contract and threatened to break it so O&O remained active as a precaution.

At the same time, it was faced with competition from the ever-larger ships of Pacific Mail and began to divest itself of its charter contracts, curtailing that of Gaelic in 1904.