ABSTRACT
Re-inventing ships in the nineteenth century took place in a variety of local contexts, involved a diverse range of practices and skills, and depended above all upon the active engagement of human agents. This chapter investigates the role of a closely allied Scottish network centered on the old shipbuilding town of Greenock. Its principal focuses on a ship-owning company with values very different from that of the famous North Atlantic shipping line. Thus Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (RMSP), in its early metropolitan-centered ambitions to serve national and imperial interests through the closest possible ties with Admiralty, strikingly contrasted the comparatively small-scale, unostentatious, and 'family-run' Canard project. As the vision and the promises yielded to the practicalities of realizing a fleet of 14 large steamers, RMSP Directors increasingly shifted their trust from Admiralty authorities to commercial contractors. Card & Company's rise to pre-eminence in the realization of the project, however, was neither inevitable nor self-evident.
