In 1840 The British and North American Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company was formed.
In 1878 the firm became Cunard Steamship Company, Limited.
After a 1934 merger with White Star, the company was known as Cunard White Star Line, but was renamed Cunard Line in 1950. The present-day headquarters are located in London, UK and the Valencia section of the city
In 1838 shipping magnate Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, along with engineer Robert Napier and businessmen James Donaldson, Sir George Burns, and David MacIver formed the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (BNARMSPC). Note that this company was distinct from the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company founded in London in 1839 by Scot James Macqueen.
BNARMSPC successfully bid for the rights to a transatlantic mail shipping contract between England and America - winning this entitled it to use the RMS (Royal Mail Ship) prefix on its vessels. The company later changed its name to Cunard Steamships Ltd.
In May 1840 the 648 gross ton coastal paddle steamer SS Unicorn, the company's first steamship, made the company's first transatlantic trip. Under the direction of Captain Douglas, she carried 24 passengers, including Edward Cunard (Samuel's son), on a trip lasting 14 days, at an average speed of 8 knots, thereby meeting the contract requirement of a crossing in a fortnight. Regular passenger and cargo service by steamship was inaugurated by the paddle steamer Britannia, the first ship commissioned by the company. On 4 July 1840 she sailed from Liverpool to Halifax, arriving in 12 days, then to Boston in 2 days 8 hours more.
Caledonia was one of their first ships
Cunard faced many competitors from Britain, France, the United States and Germany, but survived them all. This was mainly due to a great focus on safety. Cunard ships were usually not the largest or the fastest but they earned a reputation for being the most reliable and the safest. The prosperous company eventually absorbed Canadian Northern Steamships Ltd and Cunard's principal competitor, the White Star Line, owners of the ill-fated RMS Titanic and the HMHS Britannic.
Between 1914 and 1918 Cunard Line built its European headquarters in Liverpool. The grand neo-Classical Cunard Building was to be the third of Liverpool's 'Three Graces'. The headquarters were used by Cunard until the 1960s.
For more than a century and a half, Cunard dominated the Atlantic passenger trade and was one of the world's most important companies, with the majority of their liners being built at John Brown's Shipyard, Clydebank, Scotland. Its ships played important roles in the development of the world economy, and also participated in all of Britain's major wars from Crimea to the Falklands War, when Cunard's container ship Atlantic Conveyor was sunk by an Exocet missile.
Cunard Line and Princess Cruises headquarters in Santa ClaritaThe line began to decline in the 1950s as speedy air travel began to replace ships as the main transporters of passengers and mail across the Atlantic. Cunard tried to address this by forming BOAC-Cunard Ltd in 1962 with the British Overseas Airways Corporation to operate scheduled air services to North America, the Caribbean and South America. It was dissolved in 1966. In 1971, Cunard Line was acquired by British shipping and industrial conglomerate Trafalgar House, which held the line until its takeover by Kvaerner in 1996. In 1983 Cunard took over the luxury cruise line Norwegian America Line, and in 1994 another luxury cruise company, Royal Viking Line.
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] Wikipedia