THE PENINSULA AND ORIENTAL COMPANY.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 36, 2 December 1842, Page 3

THE PENINSULA AND ORIENTAL COMPANY.

The Directors of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company have published a counter-statement to a letter which was recently published in most of the daily journals by some passengers in -the Braganza steamer, when she was forced back to Falmouth, from which we give the following extract: —“The vessels of this company have been employed four years and three months in carrying on the mail service between England and the Peninsular. They have had to start punctually on a certain day every week, and in all seasons of the year, and have to make the passage both going and coming, across the Bay of Biscay, so long noted hitherto for its dangers. They have, during this period,- which includes five winter seasons, made 444 passages, forming a total of 700,000 miles. Out of these 444 passages there have only six instances occurred in which the vessels put back ; two of them were in consequence of hull damage, and four from damages to machinery and none of them were productive of any injury, further than the interruption of a week in the regular course of the mails. This is my first fact. The second is, that since the foundation of this establishment as the “ London and Dublin Steam Company,” which subsequently extended itself into the “Peninsular Company” in 1837, and since September, 1840, has been incorporated as the “ Peninsular and Oriental' Steam Navigation Company.” for extending Steam Communication to the East Indies, the original proprietors continuing still to be the largest holders of its stock, and retaining a full share in its direction, upwards of 200,000 passengers have been conveyed in their steam vessels without the loss of a single life, or causing a single injury of any kind by accident. Can any land conveyance produce a parallel to this ? This company, so far from having shrunk from the due execution of their mail contract, which was obtained by them in the face of a public competition, have actually furnished, vessels of an aggregate power of 500 horses over and above what their contract requires—five vessels of 140 horsepower each, in all 700 horses ; whereas the power of the vessels employed amounts to 1240.”