MONTAGUE DAWSON R.S.M.A., F.R.S.A. | THE PACKET DEVONSHIRE

The present work depicts the packet ship Devonshire. Named for the Duke of Devonshire, it was built in New York in 1848 by Westervelt & Mackey. The first packet ships were built in the eighteenth century and were designed to transport mail between Great Britain and her colonies, as well as passengers and freight. In her first year of frequent sailing between New York and London, Devonshire transported the largest number of cabin passengers ever to cross the Atlantic and garnered much attention as one of the finest examples of naval engineering (Holden's Dollar Magazine, New York, January 1848, vol. I, p. 571).