She brought together three improvements in steamship design: higher boiler pressure, an efficient and compact compound steam engine, and a hull form with modest power requirements.

Later examples include a motor ship Agamemnon built in 1929, which in the Second World War was converted into an auxiliary minelayer.

The third was an iron hull that was strong in relation to its weight and cost and with modest power requirements – again developed by Alfred Holt.

[1] Agamemnon's fuel efficiency enabled her to compete successfully with tea clippers between Britain and China.

[7] The newly built Agamemnon arrived in Liverpool from Greenock on 1 April 1866, the year of the clippers' Great Tea Race.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 guaranteed the success of Agamemnon and her sister ships by shortening the route that a steamship could take from Europe to China whilst sailing vessels still had to travel via the Cape of Good Hope.

Associates and competitors of Alfred Holt built similar ships and the nature of long-distance maritime trade had taken a major technological change.