The Age of Cunard: A Transatlantic History 1839-2003For a century and a half, the single most important sea lane in the world was the transatlantic route linking the Old World with the New. For three hundred years, sailing ships sufficed to carry cargoes and people, but the demands of Steam Age business and commerce demanded more regularity. Just as the steam engine had allowed railroads to replace the unpredictability of stagecoaches on land with dependable schedules, steamships promised to bring this reliability to crossing the Atlantic. This is where the story of the Cunard Line began. The greatest influence Cunard would ever have on world events would be the leading role during the last half of the 19th century, when the great migration of millions of emigrants transformed the populations of Europe, the United States, and Canada. Wars devastation came to the Cunard Line with WW1 and WW2, as the power of the German submarine fleet -- built with one purpose in mind, to sever the North Atlantic shipping lanes -- threatened Great Britains very existence. By 1963, more people chose to travel by airplane than by steamship -- and it was the beginning of the end. Sir Winston Churchill observed, "You came into great things by the accident of sea power... By an accident of air power, you will probably cease to exist." |
Contents
POEM | 9 |
INTRODUCTION | 11 |
PROLOGUE | 17 |
The North Atlantic | 19 |
Samuel Cunard | 35 |
Setting the Pace | 51 |
The Yankee Rival | 71 |
The Struggle for Supremacy | 85 |
Return to Glory | 259 |
The Second World War | 285 |
The Warrior Queens | 309 |
Cunard Triumphant | 331 |
Decline and Fall | 361 |
Limbo | 387 |
Resurrection | 409 |
Epilogue | 433 |
White Star Rising | 103 |
The German Challenge | 129 |
Cunard Ascendant | 147 |
The Glory Years | 179 |
The Great War | 203 |
Collapse | 233 |
Appendix | 437 |
Authors Note | 451 |
| 455 | |
| 458 | |
Common terms and phrases
aboard Admiralty American Aquitania beam began Blue Ribband boilers Boston Britain Britannia British Builder built cabins Captain cargo Carmania Carnival Caronia carrying Century Chantiers de l'Atlantique Collins company's crew crossing cruise cruiser Cunard Line Cunard ships decks engines feet four funnels German Glasgow Glasgow Gross Tonnage guns Halifax Hamburg-Amerika Harland and Wolff hull hull-Single screw Service hull-Twin screw Service hundred Inman Iron hull-Single screw John Brown knots Passenger accommodation later launched length lifeboats Line's liner Liverpool Lord Inverclyde Lusitania Lusitania and Mauretania maiden voyage Mauretania merchant months never Norddeutscher-Lloyd North Atlantic ocean packet port Queen Elizabeth Queen Mary Robert Napier Royal Navy sailing Samuel Cunard screw Service speed Second Class ship's shipbuilding shipyard sister Southampton steam steamer steamship Steel hull-Twin screw superstructure Third class thousand tons Dimensions torpedo transatlantic troops turbines U-boat vessels White Star Line yard York