The Royal Mail Line was the most important passenger steamboat organization on Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence River in the mid-nineteenth century. This study traces the organizational changes in the line from the time when centralized management was first achieved to its amalgamation with the principal passenger steamboat firm on the middle and lower St. Lawrence.

While the central focus is the internal changes in the operations of the line, several factors impinging on this development are analyzed. The Grand Trunk Railway constricted the economic basis of the line, especially with reference to government contracts, but the growth in leisure travel by central Canadians allowed the line to remain profitable. While the marine architecture of the passenger trades underwent little change during the period, the forwarding vessels, which had been inserted in the mail lines in the early fifties, subsequently began to develop along different lines. The economic dislocations concurrent with, but only in part dependent upon, the completion of the railway resulted in dramatic changes in the organization of the trade. The emergence of a joint stock corporation as the new organizational model brought with it new managerial arrangements. While previously several of the major figures in the Royal Mail Line had experienced bankruptcy, the new corporation never failed to show a profit.

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Chapter 5 appeared in FreshWater.