Today's auction house artefact is this print of the launch of the Royal Mail Steamship "Forth" in Leith in 1841
RMS Forth was launched on May 22 1841 "in the presence of 60,000 Spectators". At 1,940 tons burthen (that's an estimate of her carrying capacity or "tonnage"), she was probably the largest thing ever built at Leith at the time.
The newly established Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. was funded by a government subsidy and had a contract to provide a fleet of not fewer than 14 ships for carrying all Her Majesty's mails, "to sail twice every month to Barbados in the West Indies from Southampton or Falmouth"
They ordered 14 new mail steamers named after British rivers, with Thames, Medway, Trent, and Isis (built at Northfleet); Severn and Avon (Bristol); Tweed, Clyde, Teviot, Dee, and Solway (Greenock); Tay (Dumbarton); Medina (Cowes) and Forth at Leith
"Forth" did not have a long life however and was wrecked in January 1849, she ran aground on Scorpion Reef off the north coast of Yucatán, Mexico. All her passengers and crew were fortuitously landed on the reef and were saved
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