Marshall O. Roberts, and Bowes McIlvaine, of New York.[GB] The second
contract was for the Pacific service, connecting with the mail by the
Sloo line across the Isthmus. This was made with Arnold Harris of
Arkansas. It provided for a monthly service between Panama and Astoria,
Oregon, calling at San Diego, Monterey, and San Francisco, with a
subsidy of one hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars per annum. Three
steamers were to be furnished, two of not less than a thousand tons
each. Upon receiving the contract Mr. Harris immediately transferred it
to W.H. Aspinwall of New York, representing the newly formed Pacific
Mail Steamship Company.[GC] The third was the Collins contract. This
stipulated for a semi-monthly service between New York and Liverpool
during the eight open months of the year, and a monthly service through
the four winter months, with five steamers, each of not less than 2000
tons and engines of a thousand horsepower. The first ship was to be
ready for service in eighteen months after the date of the contract,
November 1, 1847. The subsidy was fixed at $19,250 per twenty round
trips, or three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars a year, a rate
of $3.11 a mile for sailing about 124,000 miles.[GD]

By subsequent acts the secretary of the navy was authorized to advance
twenty-five thousand dollars a month on each of the ships called for by
these several contracts from the time of their launching to their
finish; and the date of the completion of the first Collins steamer and
the opening of the New York and Liverpool service was extended to June
1, 1850.[GE]

At the same time that the secretary of the navy was executing these
contracts the postmaster-general under the authority of an act "to
establish certain Post Routes and for other purposes," also approved
March 3, 1847,[GF] was contracting for a steamship mail-service between