Shortly after the New York and Havre Steamship Company, with two vessels and a postal subsidy of $150,000, entered the field and continued operations with only moderate success until 1868.
The only really notable effort of Americans in the early days of steam navigation to get their share of transatlantic trade--indeed, I might almost say the most determined effort until the present time--was that made by the projectors of the Collins line, and it ended in disaster, in heavy financial loss, and in bitter sorrow.
E.K.Collins was a New York shipping merchant, the organizer and manager of one of the most famous of the old lines of sailing packets between that port and Liverpool--the Dramatic line, so called from the fact that its ships were named after popular actors of the day.

Recognizing the fact that the sailing ship was fighting a losing fight against the new style of vessels, Mr.Collins interested a number of New York merchants in a distinctly American line of transatlantic ships.

It was no easy task.
Capital was not over plenty in the American city which now boasts itself the financial center of the world, while the opportunities for its investment in enterprises longer proved and less hazardous than steamships were numerous.

But a Government mail subsidy of $858,000 annually promised a sound financial basis, and made the task of capitalization possible.

It seems not unlikely that the vicissitudes of the line were largely the result of this subsidy, for one of its conditions was extremely onerous: namely, that the vessels making twenty-six voyages annually between New York and Liverpool, should always make the passage in better time than the British Cunard line, which was then in its eighth year.