3-021-428 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Adriatic and Oriental Company's screw-steamer Cairo, of the Brindisi and Alexandria Line, 1869. 'The vessels employed on the line from Brindisi to Alexandria, a distance of 954 miles, traversed in eighty-two hours...[or less] are those belonging to the " Società Anonima Italiana di Navigazione Adriatico-Orientale"...[They are] built of iron by Messrs. Palmers' Shipbuilding and Ironworks Company...the Cairo...[has] a good staff of Italian officers and crew; but the engineers are Englishmen...[She] has accommodation for seventy first-class and seventy second-class passengers; the first-class fare, including food, is 275f., or about £11. These steam-boats leave Venice at three o'clock every Saturday afternoon, arriving at Brindisi on the Monday. They leave Brindisi at nine o' clock every Monday evening, and arrive at Alexandria on the Friday morning. They start on their return from Alexandria every Sunday morning...The times of arrival and departure at Alexandria for the Brindisi boats will always correspond with the dates of the Indian mails; and the Indian news published by the London daily papers is often derived from letters and papers which have reached us by the Brindisi route sooner than they could have arrived here by Marseilles'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.