• STEAMSHIP COMPANIES. 125
the tedious voyage round Cape Horn. With this end in view, on the 3rd of March, 1847, the secretary of the navy was authorized by congress to contract for a mail steamship service from New York via Panama to Astoria, Oregon, touching on the Atlan- tic side at Charleston, Savanali, and Habana, and on the Pacific at San Diego, Monterey, and San Fran- cisco. Under this authorization a contract for a monthly service for ten years, at a compensation of $199,000 per annum, was awarded to Arnold Harris, who assigned it to William H. Aspinwall and his associates. Here, then, was the beginning of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which, stimulated by the acquisition of California, and the subsequent ^old discoveries — both of which events happened within less than three months after its organization — assumed mammoth proportions, and became the largest oceanic transportation company the world has ever seen, having operated some sixty or seventy steamers, sending its monster vessels ploughing the seas every fifteen days half round the globe from New York to Hong Kong, by way of Panama and San Francisco.
Until the autumn of 1855, the operations of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company were limited to the Pacific, the service on the Atlantic being under the auspices of the United States Mail Steamship Com- pany, which sailed their vessels in connection with the Pacific company. During the year of its organi- zation, which was in the latter part of 1847, three steamers were built and despatched round Cape Horn for San Francisco, via Panamd: first the California, then the Panama, and lastly the Oregon, although the Panama being obliged to put back for repairs, the Oregon was the first to arrive at her destination. In this naming of their crafts it would seem that Cali- fornia, even then, was the central idea in the minds of these ship-owners, although it is afiirmed that authentic news of the discovery of gold had not
