The extra allowance lifted
the Collins subsidy to $853,000 for twenty-six trips a year,
thirty-three thousand dollars per voyage, a rate of upward of five
dollars a mile.[GP]
The competition now became sharper. Still the Collins Line maintained
its record sailings, and continued to beat the English. Then it was
sharply checked by a grave disaster. On the twenty-fourth of September,
1854, the _Arctic_, when forty miles off Cape Race, rushing through a
fog, was rammed by a French steamer, and sunk with three hundred and
seven souls. This calamity had a depressing effect on the company's
affairs. Two years later, in 1856, Congress determined to reduce the
subsidy, and notice of the discontinuance of the extra allowance of 1852
was ordered.[GQ] Only a few weeks after this action another disaster,
even more appalling than the first one, befell the company. On September
23 the _Pacific_ sailed from Liverpool for her homeward voyage with a
full complement of passengers; passed to sea out of sight; and was never
more heard of. She was replaced by the _Adriatic_, the fifth ship called
for by the contract, which was launched the year before, the largest,
finest, swiftest, and most luxurious then afloat; and the company
struggled on against accumulating odds.
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