The gentlemen of the management committee are well aware of how well the steam paddle ships from France's Brest Shipyard are selling.
Currently, thirty percent of the ships on the Rhine-Danube route are of this type—a result achieved in less than two years—while the remaining seventy percent of oar and sail ships have taken many decades to accumulate.
Steam paddle ships are also ubiquitous in the Mediterranean Sea; although their percentage is not as high as in river transport, the absolute number is larger due to the enormous trade volume there.
Under the pressure of steamships, freight prices for old-fashioned oar and sail ships are continuously dropping. It is foreseeable that, at most in a decade or so, the inland river shipping market will be entirely unified by steamships.
This huge market has already been seized by the French people, and England must catch up quickly.
