ocean liners may be defined as powered passenger-carrying vessels running a regular scheduled service across oceanic routes. Before the introduction of the jet passenger plane, it was the shipping lines, running passenger ships on a regular schedule, that were the primary means of connecting one continent with another. During the heyday of the passenger shipping companies the French had, and still have, the Messageries Maritimes, the Germans the Hapag Lloyd and the Hamburg–South America Lines, and the Italians the Lloyd Triestino and Italia Lines, and their ships linked their countries with every corner of the world. But it was the British, with their far-flung empire, that predominated in this form of transport: P. & O. (Peninsular & Orient) ships sailed to India and Australia, Blue Funnel ones went to China and Japan, Union Castle ships, each with the word ‘castle’ in its name, ran regularly to and from South Africa, while the Royal Mail Line went to South America. These were only a few of the best-known companies, and during a century or more (1840–1960) they, and many others, were founded and then grew, before merging with others, or with one another, until their names finally disappeared as the era of the ocean liner drew to a close. Nowadays, it is the transatlantic route that is best remembered for the biggest, fastest, and most luxurious, ocean liners.

The First Ocean Liners.

The British paddle steamer Enterprize was the first to attempt to establish a regular scheduled route—to India—in 1823. This came to nothing and it was an American, Junius Smith, who first started a regular ocean service after issuing the prospectus for the British & American Steam Navigation Company in 1835. His intention was to run a two-weekly service, with four paddle steamers, two built in the USA and two in Britain. The American steamers never materialized but in England the 1,850-ton British Queen and the 2,350-ton President were built for the company. Delays to the British Queen forced the company in April 1838 to charter another paddle steamer, the 700-ton Sirius. However, the British Queen made several crossings after that and was joined by the President in 1840. But the President was underpowered and when she foundered in 1841 she sank the company as well. A more successful early ocean liner was Isambard Brunel's Great Western, which arrived in New York only hours behind the Sirius. The first passenger steamship built specifically for transatlantic crossings, she was followed by the two other Brunel creations, the Great Britain and the Great Eastern.

In 1840 the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, always known as P. & O., started a regular ‘Steam conveyance from London and Falmouth to Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the Ionian Islands, Egypt, and India’, though those travelling to India had to travel overland between Alexandria and a Red Sea port to pick up a sea connection to their destination. With the aid of more Admiralty contracts for delivering mail the service was extended to Singapore and Hong Kong in 1845, and to Australia in the early 1850s.

From this modest beginning P. & O. grew into a company which ran regular steamship services to the Far East and Australasia. Over the following decades it built many fine ocean liners to serve these routes, one of the best known being the 45,000-ton Canberra, launched in 1961. With the Holland–America's Rotterdam, the Canberra produced a new look to ocean liners as her twin funnels and engine machinery were positioned well aft in the manner of bulk carriers and tankers. Affectionately christened the ‘Great White Whale’, she was, like Queen Elizabeth II (QEII), requisitioned as a troopship during the Falklands War of 1982.

Early Transatlantic Liners.

The same year as P. & O. began its regular scheduled sailings, a Nova Scotian, Samuel Cunard (1787–1865), began a regular transatlantic passenger service after he had won a British government mail contract to replace the transatlantic mail brigs with steamships (see also rms). In the terms of his tender he guaranteed to build four ships that would operate two voyages to the USA and back every month, winter and summer. With Robert Napier, one of the best-known marine engineers of his day, Cunard formed the British & North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (known as the Cunard Line from 1878) with two shipbuilding firms. They constructed for him four wooden-hulled paddle steamers, all of similar size—1,156 tons and 63 metres (207 ft) on the keel—and he began operating them from Liverpool to Boston with a voyage time of fifteen days. They each carried 115 passengers and 225 tons of cargo.

Cunard had the sensible but unexciting policy of letting others be the innovators, and he was averse to opulence, and it was left to shipowners like William Inman to break new ground. Inman's 1,600-ton, iron-hulled, propeller-driven City of Glasgow, which he acquired in 1850, was the ‘true prototype of the modern ocean steamship’ ( C. Gibbs, Passenger Liners of the Western Ocean (1952), 95). In 1850 paddle steamers could carry 500 tons of cargo; the City of Glasgow carried 1,200 tons and nearly as many passengers with far greater economy, and showed it was possible to make profits without being subsidized. More importantly, her fares were cheap enough to attract a new and profitable source of income, emigrants. Meals were provided, unheard of for steerage passengers at that time, and a far cry from 1837 when seventeen steerage passengers died of starvation after a sailing packet took 100 days to cross the Atlantic. Screw ships like the Inman Line's record-breaking City of Paris, launched in 1865, soon proved they were also faster than the paddle steamer. Nevertheless, City of Paris was ship-rigged on her three masts, a necessary precaution. The last Inman Line ship was launched in 1888. Called City of Paris, too, she was one of the first passenger ships with twin screws. But she still carried three masts rigged for sails, and it wasn't until the 1890s that passenger ships relied entirely on their engines.

The White Star and Cunard Lines.

From 1871 a strong competitor to Cunard and Inman was the British Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, better known as the White Star Line. The line's fortunes lay in its partnership with the Belfast shipbuilding firm of Harland & Wolff that produced for it the 3,850-ton Oceanic class, which ‘rendered all existing passenger tonnage obsolescent’ (Gibbs, Passenger Liners). Their success was primarily due to their compound engines which dramatically reduced fuel consumption, and therefore bunkerage space for coal, allowing more space for passengers or extra cargo. But Harland & Wolff also introduced a new hull form, raising the beam to length ratio from 8 : 1 to 10 : 1, that cut fuel costs further and increased speed. They also moved the saloon and best cabins amidships, away from their traditional place in the stern. This increased the level of comfort, as did the larger cabins which were fitted with electric bells and much larger portholes. The White Star Line's best-known liners were the 45,300-ton Olympic, which became the largest ocean liner in the world when she was launched in 1911, the ill-fated 46,300-ton Titanic (1912), and the 48,150-ton Britannic (1915) which was sunk by a mine in the Aegean in 1916. The White Star Line continued in business into the 1920s before merging with the Cunard Line in 1934.

It is for its 20th-century ocean liners that Cunard is best known today and with them it set a new standard of luxury, speed, and size. ‘The main consideration’, one maritime historian has noted, ‘is to convey the idea that one is not at sea, but on terra firma.’ They include such famous names as the 31,950-ton Mauretania (1906)—a second larger one (35,750 tons) of the same name was launched in 1939—the 31,550-ton Lusitania (1906), and the 45,650-ton Aquitania (1913). The earlier Mauretania and the Lusitania were the first ocean liners to be fitted with quadruple screws driven by steam turbines. These vessels were followed in the 1930s by the 81,235-ton Queen Mary (1936), and the 83,673-ton Queen Elizabeth (1938). The latter did not enter service until after the Second World War (1939–45) and both were used as troopships. Out of the 865,000 US servicemen sent to the UK before the end of the war, these two liners transported 320,000 of them.

Twentieth-century Rivalry and Decline.

The main rivals to the British for the coveted blue riband during the first three decades of the 20th century were, at different times, the USA, Germany, and France, though Italy was also a contender. Immediately before the First World War (1914–18) the German Hamburg–America Line built three liners for the transatlantic route that were to remain the world's largest until 1935: the 51,950-ton Imperator (1912), the 54,300-ton Vaterland (1914), and the 56,550-ton Bismarck (1914), the fastest of the three. After the war they were all handed over as war reparations and became, respectively, the Cunard's Berengaria, the United States Line's Leviathan, and the Cunard's Majestic, and all remained in service into the 1930s. By then a new generation of ocean liners had been launched and pre-eminent among them were the French Line's 43,150-ton Île de France (1926) and the 79,300-ton Normandie (1932). The latter was the French answer to the Queen Mary, and was longer by almost three metres (9.5 ft).

But while the Cunarder was a natural development of earlier liners, the Normandie was full of innovations that included taking streamlining to the limit and a revolutionary turbo-electric propulsion system, and the luxury of her accommodation has probably never been equalled. On her maiden voyage in 1935 she broke all known speed records by a wide margin, crossing in a time of 4 days, 3 hours, 2 minutes, at an average speed of 29.98 knots. She was laid up in New York at the start of the Second World War, but was seized by the American authorities in December 1941. Renamed the Lafayette, work was started to convert her to a troopship but she caught fire in February 1942 and capsized at her berth.

The 1930s were undoubtedly the apogee of the age of the ocean liner and the glamour and the luxury could never quite be revived after the Second World War. However, Britain, France, and the USA all launched new liners which, for a while at least, earned their keep. In 1952 the 53,985-ton United States entered the North Atlantic service to compete with the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth. Though ordered by the US Navy as a troopship, it was always the intention to sell the United States to the United States Line and the line acquired her, at a fraction of her original cost, immediately she was launched. She broke the record by a wide margin, crossing in 3 days, 10 hours, 40 minutes at an average speed of 35.59 knots, a speed that has never been equalled by a scheduled commercial passenger ship on the transatlantic route. The French Line also decided that a new luxury liner was still commercially viable on the North Atlantic route and in February 1962 the 66,348-ton France made her maiden voyage from Le Havre to New York. She added a late sparkle to the transatlantic route before being withdrawn in 1972 to become a cruise ship. In 1974 she was laid up but in 1979 was acquired by a Florida-based cruise ship company and given a major refit. Renamed Norway, she was still operating in 2004.

Queen Mary made her last westbound voyage in 1967, and is now on display at Long Beach, California; Queen Elizabeth was withdrawn from service in 1968 and sold, first to the USA and then to a Hong Kong businessman, and in 1972 she was destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbour. The United States was withdrawn in 1969, the year that Cunard's 65,863-ton QEII made her maiden voyage. But Cunard had already foreseen that the era was at an end and made a late decision—the liner's hull was nearly completed—to make QEII a suitable cruise ship, and she was changed from a three-class ship to a two-class one.

See also diesel engine; electric propulsion; evaporators; steering gear.

Bibliography

Bathe, B. , Seven Centuries of Sea Travel (1975).
Gibbs, G. , Passenger Liners of the Western Ocean (1952).
Howarth, D. and and S. , The Story of P. & O. (1986).
Maxtone-Graham, J. , The North Atlantic Run (1972).