Cunard returned to London, brought his first Napier contract over to the Admiralty and Treasury, and found them ‘highly pleased’. Reporting this news to Napier, Cunard invoked the regional engineering rivalries, then raging, to warn and inspire Napier to his best efforts and punctuality. ‘You have no idea of the prejudice of some of our English Builders,’ Cunard wrote, guileless in his guile. ‘I have had several offers from Liverpool and this place and when I have replied that I have contracted in Scotland they invariably say “You will neither have substantial work or completed in time.” The Admiralty agree with me in opinion the Boats will be as good as if built in this Country and I have assured them that you will keep to time.’ (An oblique reference to the British Queen and her delays.) Someone else had told him that Thames engines would use less coal per horsepower, but Cunard assured the man he was mistaken and pointedly reported the exchange to Napier: ‘The Admiralty cautioned me on this head therefore take good care that you bear me out in my assertions. ’ Cunard also pressed Napier and Wood to start building his ships (‘How is Mr Wood progressing – tell him I will be down upon him some of these mornings when he may not expect me’).
‘I am sorry that some of the British tradesmen should indulge in speaking ill of their competitors in Scotland,’ replied Napier, not surprised. ‘I shall not say more than court comparison of my work with any other in the kingdom.’ The two men, so new to each other, were still forming crucial first impressions by poking around and testing the other, gradually settling into what became the most important working relationship of their lives. Cunard sent along reports of the latest patented steam innovations; Napier, playing his expected engineering role, passed sceptical judgments and reassured the entrepreneur. ‘I was quite prepared for your being beset with all the schemers of every description in the country,’ he advised Cunard. ‘Every solid and known improvement that I am made acquainted with shall be adopted by me, but no patent plans.’
For his part, Cunard was having serious money problems. He still had no signed contract with the government. The first Napier deal was just with Cunard: he alone had to come up with a binder of £5000 and the first instalment of £5000 more. At the same time, precisely the wrong time, his falling out with George Renny Young forced him to find about £14,000 to complete his purchase of the Young family’s interest in the Prince Edward Island land company. Juggling the two enterprises, Cunard was caught without enough cash in England. When Napier took his first note from Cunard to the bank, it was accepted only after a suspicious delay and objections. Napier was surprised and dismayed. ‘The truth is,’ Napier warned Cunard, ‘had I not been completely satisfied beforehand from other trustworthy sources of your undoubted respectability and highly honourable character, my confidence in you would have been shaken.’
If this early crisis had turned a certain way, it could have killed the whole enterprise at the outset. Instead it turned another way and gave the scheme a wider, more secure base, transformed it, and set up the leadership structure that would run the Cunard Line for decades. Napier, now less sure of his new partner, felt obliged to protect his own local reputation for sound dealings. Stepping back, he went around Cunard and confided in Robert Rodger, the Glasgow banker who had doubted Cunard’s credit. ‘I have no wish to put you to the least trouble or inconvenience on my account,’ he assured Rodger. ‘The transaction with Mr Cunard is of such a magnitude that I must not have the least risk of trouble or anxiety about the money part of it.’ The two Glaswegians, acting in their respective self-interests, came up with a protective local solution. They invited other investors into the scheme to provide the cash cushion that was manifestly beyond Cunard’s overstretched resources.
As part of this manoeuvre, they also brought in local experts at running a steamship line, George Burns and the brothers David and Charles Mac Iver. Former rivals, for almost a decade these three men had together been operating profitable coastal steam packets between Glasgow and Liverpool. If Burns and the Mac Ivers were involved, Napier urged Cunard, ‘the vessels would be well and honestly managed, and save much trouble to all concerned and make money.’ Furthermore, though contrary to his usual practice, given their participation Napier might himself take ‘a small interest’ in the venture: a rippling expression of confidence sure to lure other investors in Glasgow. ‘I have several offers but am bound to no one,’ Cunard replied to Napier. ‘I should much like to have you and your friends with me.’ Within a few days, Napier and Burns found their partners (mainly interested businessmen in Glasgow), thus delivering the venture from the uncertainties of Cunard’s own money and – most significantly – binding its future to the Clyde. ‘I want to shew the Americans what can be done in Glasgow,’ Cunard reminded Napier, turning several screws, ‘and that neither Bristol or London boats can beat them.’
From that point, the pieces all fell into place quickly. In June 1839 Cunard, Burns and David Mac Iver signed the final revised contract with the Admiralty for the mail service. It called for four steamships of 400 horsepower, 206 feet long, and 1120 tons, sailing twice each month between Liverpool and Halifax, and then Halifax and Boston, for the government’s payment of £60,000 a year for seven years. (The designation of Liverpool, headquarters of the Mac Ivers’ coastal packets, reflected the transatlantic enterprise’s new ownership structure.) The first ships were to be ready for sea by May 1840. Napier would build the engines, and to meet the soon-looming deadline the ships’ construction was parcelled out to four different Clyde shipbuilders. (‘I dare say I get a good deal of credit for it, but I am not entitled to it,’ Cunard later said of his first steamships. ‘Any credit that there may be in fixing upon the vessels of proper size and proper power is entirely due to Mr. Napier, for I have not the science myself; he gave me the dimensions.’)
In the final partnership agreement, Cunard took the largest portion at £55,000. James Donaldson, the leading cotton broker in Glasgow, took the next biggest piece at £16,000, followed by eight others at £11,600. Napier threw in £6100, Burns £5500, and the Mac Ivers £4000 each. In all, thirty-three investors from Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester provided a total working capital of £270,000. Napier had brokered the whole deal and henceforth was deeply involved, in effect working for himself as both the engine builder and a part owner. Cunard remained the central figure, the founder and ultimate boss. ‘I had the whole interest for some time in the original contract,’ he later explained. ‘But circumstances turned up which made it necessary that I should part with some portion, and I did; but I have still the management.’ The official name was the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. From the start, it was known more simply as Cunard’s line or the Cunard Line.
The first four ships of the line were, as Cunard had directed, plain and comfortable, with no unnecessary expense for show. The keels were laid almost simultaneously within a small circle of shipbuilders along the Clyde. John Wood crafted and built the Acadia, the pattern for the others. His brother Charles Wood built the Caledonia; Robert Steele, the Columbia; and Robert Duncan, the Britannia. (The names of the ships made careful, portioned reference to Nova Scotia, Scotland, the United States and Great Britain, the four places that had launched and would then sustain the Cunard Line.) The ships had essentially identical dimensions, varying only in slight particulars: 207 feet long, 34 feet wide, and about 1150 tons. John Wood was well known for the grace and comely proportions of his wooden hulls. ‘Remarkable for the great refinement of his taste,’ the naval architect John Scott Russell, a noted contemporary, later said of Wood. ‘He was a consummate artist in shipbuilding, and every line was as studied and beautiful as fine art could make