142}
decided her owners to sell out next spring for less than a third of her
original cost. She was then degraded for a time into a local tug or
sometimes an excursion boat. But presently she was sent down to
Boston, where the band at Fort Independence played her in to the tune
of 'God Save the King,' because she was the first of all steamers to
enter a seaport of the United States under the Union Jack.

Ill luck pursued her new owners, who, on her return to Quebec, decided
to send her to England for sale. She left Quebec on August 5, 1833,
coaled at Pictou, which lies on the Gulf side of Nova Scotia, and took
her departure from there on the 18th, for her epoch-making voyage, with
the following most prosaic clearance: '_Royal William_, 363 tons. 36
men. John M'Dougall, master. Bound to London. British. Cargo: 254
chaldrons of coals [nearly 300 tons], a box of stuffed birds, and six
spars, produce of this province. One box and one trunk, household
furniture and a harp, all British, and seven passengers.' The fare was
fixed at L20, 'not including wines.'

The voyage soon became eventful. Nearly three hundred tons of coal was
a heavy concentrated cargo for the tremendous storm she encountered on
the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. {143} She strained; her starboard
engine was disabled; she began to leak; and the engineer came up to
tell M'Dougall she was sinking. But M'Dougall held his course, started
the pumps, and kept her under way for a week with only the port engine
going. The whole passage from Pictou, counting the time she was
detained at Cowes repairing boilers, took twenty-five days. M'Dougall,
a sturdy Scotsman, native of Oban, must have been sorely tempted to
'put the kettle off the boil' and run her under sail. But either the
port or starboard engine, or both, worked her the whole way over, and
thus for ever established her claim to priority in transatlantic
navigation under steam alone.

In London she was sold for L10,000, just twice what she had fetched at
sheriff's sale in Quebec some months before. She was at once
chartered, crew and all, by the Portuguese government, who declined to
buy her for conversion into a man-of-war. In 1834, however, she did
become a man-of-war, this time under the Spanish flag, though flying
the broad Pennant of Commodore Henry, who was then commanding the
British Auxiliary Steam Squadron against the Carlists in the north of
Spain. Two years later, on May 5, 1836