The Cunard Steamship Company.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 183, 13 May 1873, Page 7

The Cunard Steamship Company.

Mark Twain writes the following humorous sketch of the Cunard Steamship Company : —" It is a curious, self-possessed, oldfashioned Company, the Cunard. (Scotsmen, they are.) It was born before the days of steamships ; it inaugurated ocean steam lines ;it never lost more than one vessel; it has never lost a passenger's lifo at all ; its ships are never insured ; great mercantile firms do not insure their goods sent over in Canard ships ; it is rather safer to be in their ships than on shore. It is composed simply of two or three grandchildren who have stepped into the shoes of two or three children, who stepped into the shoes of a couple of old Scotch fathers ; for Burns and MacIvor were the Cunard Company when it was born ; it was Burns and Maclvor when the originators had passed away ; it is Burns and Maclvor still in the third generation—never has been out of the families. Burns was a Glasgow merchant, Maclvor was an old sea-dog, who sailed a ship for him in early times. That vessel's earnings were cast into a sinking fund ; with the money they built another ship, and then another, and thus the original packet line from Glasgow to Halifax was established. At that time the mails were slowly and expensively carried in British Government vessels. Burns and Maclvor, and Judge Haliburton ('Sam Slick') fell to considering a scheme of getting the job of carrying these mails in private bottoms. In order to manage the thing they needed to be quiet about it, and als<i they needed faster vessels. Haliburton had a nephew who was not a success in practical life, but bad an inventive head; name, Sam Cunard ; he took his old jack-knife and a shingle and sat down and whittled out his enormous Royal Mail Line of vessels that we call the Cunarders—a very great navy it is—doing business in every ocean ; owning fortyfive steamships of vast cost ; conducting its affairs with the rigid method and system of a national navy ; promoting by merit, priority in routine, and for conspicuous service ; using a company uniform ; retiring superannuated and disabled men and officers on permanent pensions, and numbering its servants by hundreds and thousands. In its own private establishment in Liverpool it keeps four thousand men under pay. This is what Sam Cunai"d whittled out. That is to say, he whittled out a little model for a fast vessel. It was satisfactory; he was instructed to go and get the mail contract simply under his own name ; he did it, and the Company became commonly known as the Cunard Company ; then the company tried steam and made it work ; they prospered, and bought out Haliburton, and also Cunard's litttle interest ; they removed Cunard to England and made him their London Agent; he grew very rich, and unspeakably respectable, and when he died, he died not as a poor, dreaming, provincial whittler of experimental models, but as the great Sir Samuel Cunard, K.C.8., or G.W.X., or something like that, for the sovereign bad knighted him. Well, the Cunard Company is a great institution, and has got more money than you and I both put together ; and yet none of the family ever write editorials or deliver lectures."