T.and J.Brocklebank, of world-wide repute for their fine East Indiamen, having given up building for themselves at their yard at Whitehaven, commissioned us to build for them the Alexandria, and Baroda, which were shortly followed by the Candahar and Tenasserim.

And continuing to have a faith in the future of big iron sailing ships, they further employed us to build for them two of yet greater tonnage, the Belfast and the Majestic.
Indeed, there is a future for sailing ships, notwithstanding the recent development of steam power.

Sailing ships can still hold their own, especially in the transport of heavy merchandise for great distances.
They can be built more cheaply than steamers; they can be worked more economically, because they require no expenditure on coal, nor on wages of engineers; besides, the space occupied in steamers by machinery is entirely occupied by merchandise, all of which pays its quota of freight.

Another thing may be mentioned: the telegraph enables the fact of the sailing of a vessel, with its cargo on board, to be communicated from Calcutta or San Francisco to Liverpool, and from that moment the cargo becomes as marketable as if it were on the spot.
There are cases, indeed, where the freight by sailing ship is even greater than by steamer, as the charge for warehousing at home is saved, and in the meantime the cargo while at sea is negotiable.
We have accordingly, during the last few years, built some of the largest iron and steel sailing ships that have ever gone to sea.

The aim has been to give them great carrying capacity and fair speed, with economy of working; and the use of steel, both in the hull and the rigging, facilitates the attainment of these objects.