Abstract The 1850s were a time of extraordinary change on a global scale as a variety of forces reshaped the world. The East India Company, which had long held a monopoly over trade with British India, had given way to the emerging dynamics of global free trade and global migrations that would characterize the second half of the nineteenth century. But trade was not the only force driving globalization. The increasingly colonial nature of relationships between European and other powers and Indigenous societies in the mid-1800s also drove the world closer together even as imperial struggles for control of the eastern Mediterranean brought them into conflict. This chapter explores these dynamics through the story of the construction of the Edwin Fox and its maiden voyage from Calcutta to London. It also examines the Edwin Fox’s first career as a troop transport vessel for the British Army during the Crimean War.