sustain British supremacy in overseas steam-shipping. To keep the Cunard
Line out of the American merger, and hold it absolutely under British
control and British capitalization, and, furthermore, to aid the company
immediately to build ships capable of equalling if not surpassing the
highest type of ocean liners that had to that time been produced (the
highest type then being German-built steamers operating under the German
flag), the Cunard Company were resubsidized with a special fixed subsidy
of three-quarters of a million dollars a year, instead of the Admiralty
subvention of about seventy-five thousand dollars, and in addition to
their regular mail pay, the subsidy to run for a period of twenty years
after the completion of the second of two high-grade, high-speed ocean
"greyhounds" called for for the Atlantic trade. The Government were to
lend the money for the construction of the two new ships at the rate of
2-3/4 per cent per annum, the company to repay the loan by annual
payments extending over twenty years. The company on their part pledged
themselves, until the expiry of the agreement, to remain a purely
British undertaking, the management, the stock of the corporation, and
their ships, to be in the hands of or held by British subjects only.
They were to hold the whole of their fleet, including the two new
vessels, and all others to be built, at the disposal of the Government,
the latter being at liberty to charter or purchase any or all at agreed
rates. They were not to raise freights unduly nor to give any
preferential rates to foreigners.[AX] The subsidy is equivalent to about
twenty thousand dollars for an outward voyage of three thousand miles.

* * * * *

Of the British colonies, Canada grants mail and steamship subsidies, and
fisheries bounties. In 1909-10 the Dominion's expenditures in mail and
steamship subsidies amounted to a total equivalent to $1,736,372. The