Admiralty officers, and were to carry officers of the navy to care for
the mails.[X] The service was started with the _Britannia_, the first of
the four to be finished, sailing from Liverpool for Boston on July 4,
1840. Thus was begun the career of the celebrated Cunard Line. In 1841
the subsidy was increased to eighty thousand pounds, and the number of
steamers to five; and in 1846, a further increase brought the subsidy to
eighty-five thousand pounds.[Y]

The Admiralty's favoritism toward the Cunard associates aroused a
protest from the unsuccessful bidders for the subsidy, and at length the
Great Western Company, whose bid had been the lowest, caused a
Parliamentary inquiry to be made into the transaction. They complained
that a monopoly had been granted "to their injury and to that of other
owners of steamships engaged in the trade, and who were desirous of
entering it"; and they asked the inquiry on the broad grounds "that the
public were taxed for a service from which one company alone derived the
advantage, and which could be equally well done and at less expense if
mails were sent out by all steamers engaged in the trade, each receiving
a certain amount percentage on the letters they carried."[Z] Although
the fact was brought out in the testimony that the Great Western Company
had offered to perform the service on practically the same basis as the
Cunard associates, and that afterwards the Great Western had proposed to
do it at half the subsidy to the Cunarders, the investigating committee
sustained the Admiralty's action.[AA]

The Great Western Company overcame the advantage of the Cunarders in the
latter's high mail subsidy by increased enterprise and superior
management; and prospered. In 1843 they launched the _Great Britain_,
the largest and finest steamship up to that period built for overseas
service.[AB] She was, moreover, distinguished as the first liner to be