3-043-718 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opening of the new line for the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamers from Venice, 1872. A new route, '...from Venice down the Adriatic, for [P&O] mail-steamers, with the Overland mails and passengers to India and China...view of the Poonah lying alongside the Riva dei Schiavoni, opposite the Doge's Palace and very near St. Mark's Cathedral. Both those noble buildings, the grandest monuments of Venetian glory and prosperity in the past, are seen in our Illustration, with unimpaired beauty, looking upon a scene in the harbour of Venice which none of the Doges could have foreseen. It will be remembered that the commerce of the East and the European colonisation of the Levant were anciently in the hands of the Venetian merchant-nobles, their only rivals in that part of the world feeing those of Genoa; but the conditions of maritime adventure have been greatly changed. Iron and steam-power, which Great Britain possesses most abundantly, are now the rulers of the sea...It is arranged that the Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamers shall stop at Ancona, and likewise at Brindisi, in their run down the Adriatic Sea. Many of the townspeople came on board the Poonah at Venice, where so large a steamer had never been seen before'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.