interior communities, Laird also had a personal objective of implementing Christian and humanitarian ideals. In 1832, the company sent two small ships and a brig to the Niger, the Alburkah, a paddle-wheel steamer of fifty-five tons designed by Laird, the first iron vessel to make an ocean voyage and the Quorra, conveying twenty nine men, made of wood, it measured 112 feet in length, a beam of 16 feet and a draft of eight feet. The original plan of the expedition was to set up a floating vessel, the brig at River Nun, a Niger tributary with history of trade with Europeans, and two paddle vessels to navigate northwards to establish a trading post at Lokoja. Laird was among the forty eight European voyagers in the expedition, which was led by Richard Lander, all but nine of whom died from fever or, in the case of Lander, from wounds. Though two doctors came along, quinine was rarely used to treat fever that became more pronounced as they made their ascent up the river, instead miasma was thought the main contributory reason for an epidemic of fever. Laird went up the Niger to the confluence of the Benue River (then called the Shary or Tchadda), which he was the first white man to ascend. He did not go far up the river but formed an accurate idea as to its source and course. Laird was weakened by fever and had to return to Fernando Po where he was received by Colonel Edward Nicolls, the British Governor at Fernando Po, who later became his father-in-law. He rested in Fernando Po before returning to England. Laird and Surgeon R.A.K. Oldfield were the only surviving officers besides Captain (then Lieutenant) William Allen, who accompanied the expedition on the orders of the Admiralty to survey the river. In 1837, Laird and Oldfield published the Narrative of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa by the River Niger in 1832, 1833, 1834. British and North American Steam Navigation Company Laird's interests were not, however, wholly African. In 1837 he was one of the promoters of a company formed to run steamships between England and New York, and in 1838 the Sirius, sent out by this company, was the first ship to cross the Atlantic from Europe entirely under steam. Between 1835 and 1841, Laird was involved with the British and American Steam Navigation Company. The firm