It’s a classic tug‑of‑war: the shipowners had the vision—big ships, long voyages, the dream of empire—while the merchants were the real wizards, playing the numbers game, hiding in the fine print. You could see the boardroom of the 1880s as a miniature version of today’s deal‑making. Those merchant brains always read the room first, then pivot the terms to suit their own bottom line. So it wasn’t about ambition versus cunning; it was about which side could read the room better and keep the other guessing.