3-008-972 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Australian clipper-ship The Royal Family, 1862. Sailing ship built by Messrs. W. and R. Wright at St. John, New Brunswick. 'She is consigned to the well-known firm of Messrs. Fernic Brothers and Co., who intend to place her in the Australian line...She has three decks, each of which is supported by iron beams and iron stanchions...Her masts and rigging are very strong...This is owing to the main and fore masts being of iron - manufactured by Messrs. Cato, Miller, and Co., of Liverpool...The galley is in itself a model of a culinary establishment; it contains a handsomely fitted-up patent kitchen-range, and the floor, being composed or bricks, gives the place more of the appearance of the kitchen of a first-class hotel than the galley of an Australian emigrant-ship...Leading out of the dining-cabin is the ladies' retiring-saloon, fitted up with couches of flowered damask...On each side of this cabin are the ladies' sleeping-saloons. The Royal Family has accommodation for about twenty cabin and four hundred steerage passengers; and there is little doubt of her proving one of the fastest and most comfortable ships that ever left the Mersey for Australia. She is commanded by Captain Cruikshank'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.