There were no voyages for the three years following Laird's death, but the establishment of the was soon followed by several other firms. The competition reduced prices to the point that profits were minimal. Arriving in the region in 1877, George Goldie argued for the amalgamation of the surviving British firms into a single monopolistic chartered company, a method contemporaries supposed had been buried with the ultimate failure of the East India Company following the Sepoy Rebellion. By 1879, he had helped combine James Crowther's WAC, David Macintosh's , and the William Brothers' and James Pinnock's firms into a single ; he then acted as the combined firm's agent in the territory.