Early years (1840–1850) of 1840 (1150
GRT), the first Cunard liner built for the transatlantic service The British Government started operating monthly mail
brigs from
Falmouth, Cornwall, to New York in 1756. These ships carried few non-governmental passengers and no cargo. In 1818, the
Black Ball Line opened a regularly scheduled New York–Liverpool service with
clipper ships, beginning an era when American sailing
packets dominated the North Atlantic saloon-passenger trade that lasted until the introduction of
steamships. The famed Arctic explorer Admiral Sir
William Edward Parry was appointed as Comptroller of Steam Machinery and Packet Service in April 1837. Nova Scotians led by their young Assembly Speaker,
Joseph Howe, lobbied for steam service to
Halifax. On his arrival in London in May 1838, Howe discussed the enterprise with his fellow Nova Scotian Samuel Cunard (1787–1865), a shipowner who was also visiting London on business. Cunard and Howe were associates and Howe also owed Cunard £300 (). Cunard returned to Halifax to raise capital, and Howe continued to lobby the British government. That November, Parry released a tender for North Atlantic monthly mail service to Halifax beginning in April 1839 using steamships with 300 horsepower. the
St George Steam Packet Company, owner of
Sirius, bid £45,000 for a monthly Cork–Halifax service and £65,000 for a monthly Cork–Halifax–New York service. The Admiralty rejected both tenders because neither bid offered to begin services early enough. Cunard, who was back in Halifax, did not know of the tender until after the deadline. in May 1839 Parry accepted Cunard's tender of £55,000 for a three-ship Liverpool–Halifax service with an extension to Boston and a supplementary service to Montreal. and departures from Liverpool were to be monthly during the winter and fortnightly for the rest of the year. to begin the supplementary service to Montreal. Two months later the first of the four ocean-going steamers of the
Britannia Class, departed Liverpool. By coincidence, the steamer's departure had patriotic significance on both sides of the Atlantic: she was named
Britannia, and sailed on 4 July. Even on her maiden voyage, however, her performance indicated that the new era she heralded would be much more beneficial for Britain than the US. At a time when the typical packet ship might take several weeks to cross the Atlantic,
Britannia reached Halifax in 12 days and 10 hours, averaging 8.5 knots (15.7 km/h), before proceeding to Boston. Such relatively brisk crossings quickly became the norm for the Cunard Line: during 1840–41, mean Liverpool–Halifax times for the quartet were 13 days 6 hours to Halifax and 11 days 4 hours homeward. Two larger ships were quickly ordered, one to replace the
Columbia, which sank at
Seal Island, Nova Scotia, in 1843 without loss of life. By 1845, steamship lines led by Cunard carried more saloon passengers than the sailing packets. The line also adopted a naming convention that utilised words ending in "IA". Cunard's reputation for safety was one of the significant factors in the firm's early success. '' of 1856 (3,300
GRT) During the
Crimean War Cunard supplied 11 ships for war service. Every British North Atlantic route was suspended until 1856 except Cunard's Liverpool–Halifax–Boston service. While Collins' fortunes improved because of the lack of competition during the war, it collapsed in 1858 after its subsidy for carrying mail across the Atlantic was reduced by the US Congress.
Cunard Steamship Company Ltd (1879–1934) used by Cunard Line waves aboard the
Skirmisher in 1901 with the
Lucania To raise additional capital, in 1879 the privately held British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was reorganised as a public stock corporation, the
Cunard Steamship Company, Ltd. Cunard resisted the takeover by also commissioning smaller, more profitable liners of more moderate speed, oriented at the Liverpool–Boston service. These were the '' 'Ivernias'
or Ivernia''-class: , and the later, smaller . These were known as 'intermediate' liners, and were economical and did not consume much fuel for their speed, but they were not as luxurious or as speedy as the German record-holders. British prestige was at stake. The British Government provided Cunard with an annual subsidy of £150,000 plus a low interest loan of £2.5 million (equivalent to £ in ), to pay for the construction of the two superliners, the Blue Riband winners '
and ', capable of . In 1903 the firm started a
Fiume–New York service with calls at Italian ports and Gibraltar. The next year Cunard commissioned two ships to compete directly with the
Celtic-class liners on the secondary Liverpool–New York route. In 1911 Cunard entered the St Lawrence trade by purchasing the Thompson line, and absorbed the Royal line five years later. The grand neo-Classical
Cunard Building was the third of Liverpool's
Three Graces. The headquarters were used by Cunard until the 1960s. In 1917, Cunard's facilities were co-opted by the
War Office to build aircraft for the expanding
Royal Flying Corps, later the RAF. '' of 1914 (45,650 GRT) served in both World Wars Due to First World War losses, Cunard began a post-war rebuilding programme including eleven intermediate liners. It acquired the former Hapag (renamed
Berengaria) to replace the lost
Lusitania as the running mate for
Mauretania and
Aquitania, and
Southampton replaced Liverpool as the British destination for the three-ship express service. By 1926 Cunard's fleet was larger than before the war, and White Star was in decline, having been sold by IMM. The government offered Cunard a loan of £3 million to complete Hull Number 534 and an additional £5 million to build a second ship, if Cunard merged with White Star. Also in 1947 the company commissioned five freighters and two
cargo liners. ''
, was completed in 1949 as a permanent cruise liner and Aquitania'' was retired the next year. However, some Cunard stockholders questioned the plan at the June 1961 board meeting because transatlantic flights were gaining in popularity. By 1963 the plan had been changed to a dual-purpose 55,000 GRT ship designed to cruise in the off-season. The new vessel design was known as Q4. Ultimately, this ship came into service in 1969 as the 65,500 GRT . The airline took delivery of its first
Bristol Britannia aircraft on 5 April 1960 (on lease from
Cubana). Cunard hoped to capture a significant share of the 1 million people that crossed the
Atlantic by air in 1960. This was the first time more passengers chose to make their
transatlantic crossing by air than sea. In June 1961, Cunard Eagle became the first independent airline in the UK to be awarded a licence by the newly constituted Air Transport Licensing Board (ATLB) to operate a scheduled service on the prime Heathrow – New York JFK route, but the licence was revoked in November 1961 after main competitor, state-owned
BOAC, appealed to Aviation Minister
Peter Thorneycroft. On 5 May 1962, the airline's first 707 inaugurated scheduled jet services from London Heathrow to Bermuda and Nassau. The new jet service – marketed as the
Cunarder Jet in the UK and as the
Londoner in the western hemisphere – replaced the earlier Britannia operation on this route. Cunard Eagle succeeded in extending this service to Miami despite the loss of its original transatlantic scheduled licence and BOAC's claim that there was insufficient traffic to warrant a direct service from the UK. A load factor of 56% was achieved at the outset. Inauguration of the first British through-plane service between London and Miami also helped Cunard Eagle increase utilisation of its 707s. BOAC countered Eagle's move to establish itself as a full-fledged scheduled transatlantic competitor on its Heathrow–JFK
flagship route by forming BOAC-Cunard as a new £30 million joint venture with Cunard. BOAC contributed 70% of the new company's capital and eight Boeing 707s. Cunard Eagle's long-haul scheduled operation – including the two new 707s – was absorbed into BOAC-Cunard before delivery of the second 707, in June 1962. BOAC-Cunard
leased any spare aircraft capacity to BOAC to augment the BOAC mainline fleet at peak times. As part of this deal, BOAC-Cunard also bought flying hours from BOAC for using the latter's aircraft in the event of capacity shortfalls. This maximised combined fleet use. The joint fleet use agreement did not cover Cunard Eagle's European scheduled, trooping and charter operations. However, the joint venture was not successful for Cunard and lasted only until 1966, when BOAC bought out Cunard's share. Cunard also sold a majority holding in the remainder of Cunard Eagle back to its founder in 1963. Within ten years of the introduction of jet airliners in 1958, most of the conventional Atlantic liners were gone.
Mauretania was retired in 1965,
Queen Mary and
Caronia in 1967, and
Queen Elizabeth in 1968. Two of the new intermediate liners were sold by 1970 and the other two were converted to
cruise ships.
Trafalgar House years (1971–1998) '' of 1969 (70,300 GRT) at Trondheim, Norway, in 2008 In 1971, when the line was purchased by the conglomerate
Trafalgar House, Cunard operated cargo and passenger ships, hotels and resorts. Its cargo fleet consisted of 42 ships in service, with 20 on order. The flagship of the passenger fleet was the two-year-old
Queen Elizabeth 2. The fleet also included the remaining two intermediate liners from the 1950s, plus two purpose-built cruise ships on order. Trafalgar acquired two additional cruise ships and disposed of the intermediate liners and most of the cargo fleet. During the
Falklands War,
QE2 and
Cunard Countess were chartered as troopships while Cunard's container ship
Atlantic Conveyor was sunk by an
Exocet missile. Cunard acquired the
Norwegian America Line in 1983, with two classic
ocean liner/cruise ships. Also in 1983, the Trafalgar attempted a hostile takeover of
P&O, another large passenger and cargo shipping line, which was founded three years before Cunard. P&O objected and forced the issue to the British
Monopolies & Mergers Commission. In their filing, P&O was critical of Trafalgar's management of Cunard and their failure to correct
Queen Elizabeth 2's mechanical problems. In 1984, the Commission ruled in favour of the merger, but Trafalgar decided against proceeding. In 1986 Cunard undertook its final transatlantic crossing by steam power when QE2 sailed to Bremerhaven for refit. Here she was given a new diesel power plant. In 1988, Cunard acquired
Ellerman Lines and its small fleet of cargo vessels, organising the business as Cunard-Ellerman, however, only a few years later, Cunard decided to abandon the cargo business and focus solely on cruise ships. Cunard's cargo fleet was sold off between 1989 and 1991, with a single container ship, the second
Atlantic Conveyor, remaining under Cunard ownership until 1996. In 1993, Cunard entered into a 10-year agreement to handle marketing, sales and reservations for the
Crown Cruise Line, and its three vessels joined the Cunard fleet under the Cunard Crown banner. In 1994 Cunard purchased the rights to the name of the
Royal Viking Line and its
Royal Viking Sun. The rest of Royal Viking Line's fleet stayed with the line's owner,
Norwegian Cruise Line. By the mid-1990s Cunard was ailing. The company was embarrassed in late 1994 when
Queen Elizabeth 2 experienced numerous defects during the first voyage of the season because of unfinished renovation work. Claims from passengers cost the company US$13 million. After Cunard reported a US$25 million loss in 1995, Trafalgar assigned a new CEO to the line, who concluded that the company had management issues. In 1996 the Norwegian conglomerate
Kværner acquired Trafalgar House, and attempted to sell Cunard. When there were no takers, Kværner made substantial investments to turn around the company's tarnished reputation.
Carnival (1998–present) '' of 2004 (151,400 GT), docked in
Boston Harbor as part of a tour to mark Cunard's 175th anniversary in 2015 In 1998, the cruise line conglomerate
Carnival Corporation acquired 62% of Cunard for US$425 million. Coincidently, it was the same percentage that Cunard owned in Cunard-White Star Line and the company historian later stated the acquisition was in-part due to the success of
James Cameron’s blockbuster 1997 film,
Titanic. The next year Carnival acquired the remaining 38% and stock for US$205 million. Ultimately, Carnival sued Kværner claiming that the ships were in worse condition than represented and Kværner agreed to refund US$50 million to Carnival. Each of Carnival's cruise lines is designed to appeal to a different market, and Carnival was interested in rebuilding Cunard as a luxury brand trading on its British traditions. Under the slogan "Advancing Civilization Since 1840", Cunard's advertising campaign sought to emphasise the elegance and mystique of ocean travel. Only
Queen Elizabeth 2 and
Caronia continued under the Cunard brand and the company began Project
Queen Mary to build a new ocean liner/cruise ship for the transatlantic route. Following the Carnival acquisition, Cunard Line introduced
White Star Service to
Queen Elizabeth 2 and
Caronia, as a reference to the high standards of customer service expected of the company. The term is still used today onboard its newer vessels. The company has also created the White Star Academy, an in-house programme for preparing new crew members for the service standards expected on Cunard ships. By 2001, Carnival was the largest cruise company, followed by
Royal Caribbean and
P&O Princess Cruises, which had recently separated from its parent, P&O. When Royal Caribbean and P&O Princess agreed to merge, Carnival countered with a hostile takeover bid for P&O Princess. Carnival rejected the idea of selling Cunard to resolve antitrust issues with the acquisition. European and US regulators approved the merger without requiring Cunard's sale. After the merger was completed, Carnival moved Cunard's headquarters to the offices of Princess Cruises in
Santa Clarita, California, so that administrative, financial and technology services could be combined. Carnival House opened in Southampton in 2009, and executive control of Cunard Line transferred from Carnival Corporation in the United States, to
Carnival UK, the primary operating company of Carnival plc. As the UK-listed holding company of the group, Carnival plc had executive control of all Carnival Group activities in the UK, with the headquarters of all UK-based brands, including Cunard, in offices at Carnival House. In 2004, the 36-year-old
QE2 was replaced on the North Atlantic by the ocean liner RMS
Queen Mary 2.
Caronia was sold and
Queen Elizabeth 2 continued to cruise until she was retired in 2008. In 2007 Cunard added
Queen Victoria, a cruise ship of the
Vista class originally designed for
Holland America Line. To reinforce Cunard traditions,
Queen Victoria has a small museum on board. Cunard commissioned a second Vista class cruise ship,
Queen Elizabeth, in 2010. In 2010, Cunard appointed its first female commander, Captain Inger Klein Olsen. In 2011, Cunard changed the vessel registry of all three of its ships in service to
Hamilton, Bermuda, The captains of ships registered in Bermuda can marry couples at sea, whereas those of UK-registered ships cannot, and weddings at sea are a lucrative market. Just over a year later
Queen Elizabeth returned to Liverpool under Captain Olsen to take part in the celebrations of the centenary of the Cunard Building on 2 June 2016. The ship was original supposed to be delivered in 2022, but would eventually be pushed back 2 years. At the outbreak of the
COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Cunard cut short three world-cruises, with the passengers being flown home. On 17 August 2023 Cunard completed equipping its entire fleet with the capability to utilise
shore power. The new ship
Queen Anne was delivered to Cunard on 19 April 2024, the first new ship for the line in over 14 years. She arrived in Southampton on 30 April 2024. The ship departed on her maiden cruise from Southampton to the Canary Islands on 3 May 2024, and was officially named in
Liverpool on 3 June 2024. The White Star Line flag is raised on all current Cunard ships and the
Nomadic every 15 April in memory of the
Titanic disaster. ==Cunard Hotels==