By the late 1850s, steamships finally had the range to make the opium run between India and China, although they had to pause for coal along the way. For now, the long, oceanic run between New York or London and China still seemed secure. But within a decade, Alfred Holt & Company (popularly known as the Blue Funnel Line) would launch the steamship Agamemnon, the first of three vessels that would sail regularly between Liverpool and Hong Kong, with a coaling stop at Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. The voyage would take a mere fifty-eight days.
