[4][5] (It should not be confused with the same-named Belgian/US-American shipping company Red Star Line, whose main ports of call were New York City and Philadelphia in the United States and Antwerp in Belgium).

[4] Silas Wood was by birth a New Yorker but he resided at the city of Fredericksburg upon the Rappahannock River to promote that part of the business.

[4] The first line of regular packet ships between New York and Liverpool, the Black Ball Line was established in 1817 by Isaac Wright & Son (William), Jeremiah and Francis Thompson as well as Benjamin Marshall,[10] and made semi-monthly sailings for Liverpool.

[7] Under Kermit's management, several misadventures and shipwrecks occurred, but in the quality of the ships, and their speed and regularity, the performance of Red Star Line was still better than it had been before.

[citation needed] A list of ships, that finally sailed under the flag of the Red Star Line: John R. Skeddy (1845), West Point, Constellation (1849), Underwriter (1850) and Waterloo.

[21] In the pressure of hard competition, packet schedules were tightened when reorganizing sailings due to disasters, new launchings, etc.

In 1844-1848, several ships made three-month round trips instead of the traditional four months, calculated from one Liverpool departure to the following one.

[23] After Robert Kermit's death in 1855, Carow took over the business, but faced a disastrous drop in income[24] and immense losses during the slump after the end of the American Civil War.