Ocean liner
The category does not include ferries or other vessels engaged in short-sea trading, nor dedicated cruise ships where the voyage itself, and not transportation, is the primary purpose of the trip.
Once the dominant form of travel between continents, ocean liners were rendered largely obsolete by the emergence of long-distance aircraft after World War II.
Certain characteristics of older ocean liners made them unsuitable for cruising, such as high fuel consumption, deep draught preventing them from entering shallow ports, and cabins (often windowless) designed to maximize passenger numbers rather than comfort.
Being at the top among the colonial powers, the United Kingdom needed stable maritime routes to connect different parts of its empire: the Far East, India, Australia, etc.
[11] Public enthusiasm for the new technology was not high, as none of the thirty-two people who had booked a seat boarded the ship for that historic voyage.
[12] Although Savannah had proven that a steamship was capable of crossing the ocean, the public was not yet prepared to trust such means of travel on an open sea, and, in 1820, the steam engine was removed from the ship.
The next day, SS Great Western, designed by railway engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, arrived in New York.
[9] In 1840, Cunard Line's RMS Britannia began its first regular passenger and cargo service by a steamship, sailing from Liverpool to Boston, Massachusetts.
The ship, built in Greenock and sailing between Hamburg and New York twice a month, suffered an accidental fire off the coast of Newfoundland and sank with the loss of all but 89 of the 542 passengers.
She served the Suez Canal route from England to Australia during the 1890s, up until the years leading to World War I when she was converted to an armed merchant cruiser.
This race for speed, however, was a detriment to passengers' comfort and generated strong vibration, which made her owner lose any interest in her after she lost the Blue Riband to another ship of Norddeutscher Lloyd.
RMS Oceanic and the Big Four of the White Star Line were the first liners to surpass Great Eastern as the largest passenger ships.
Faced with this major competition, the British government contributed financially to Cunard Line's construction of two liners of unmatched size and speed, under the condition that they be available for conversion into armed cruisers when needed by the navy.
This was not the case for her sister, the RMS Titanic, which sank on her maiden voyage on 15 April 1912, resulting in several major changes to maritime safety practices.
Liners converted into troop ships were painted in dazzle camouflage to reduce the risk of being torpedoed by enemy submarines.
Although other factors came into play, the loss of American lives in the sinking strongly pushed the United States to favour the Allied Powers and facilitated the country's entry into the war.
[57] A crisis arose when the United States drastically reduced its immigrant quotas, causing shipping companies to lose a large part of their income and to have to adapt to this circumstance.
Most pre-war aircraft were noisy, vulnerable to bad weather, and/or incapable of the range needed for transoceanic flights; all were expensive and had a small passenger capacity.
Four-engined bombers, such as the Avro Lancaster and Boeing B-29 Superfortress, with their range and massive carrying capacity, were natural prototypes for post-war next-generation airliners.
In 1953, the De Havilland Comet became the first commercial jet airliner; the Sud Aviation Caravelle, Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 followed, and much long-distance travel was done by air.
[76] Four ocean liners built before the World War II survive today as they have been partially or fully preserved as museums and hotels.
While originally being a cargo ship, it served as the Italian ocean liner Franca C. for Costa Lines from 1952 to 1959, and in 2010 it became a dry berthed luxury hotel on Bintan Island, Indonesia.
[85] Brazil Maru was beached in Zhanjiang, China as a tourist attraction called Hai Shang Cheng Shi in 1998, though has been closed as of 2022.
In the 1870s, the average speed of liners increased to around 15 knots the duration of a transatlantic crossing shortened to around 7 days, owing to the technological progress made in the propulsion of ships.
In Ireland, Harland & Wolff shipyard of Belfast were particularly innovative and succeeded in winning the trust of many shipping companies, such as White Star Line.
[108] The ocean liner industry in France also consisted of two rival companies: the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (commonly known as "Transat" or "French Line") and Messageries Maritimes.
Decolonization in the second half of the 20th century led to a sharp decline in profit for the MM, and it merged with the CGT in 1975 to form the Compagnie Générale Maritime.
It accounted for a large part of the clientele, who traveled between ports of Liverpool, Southampton, Hamburg, Le Havre, Cherbourg, Cobh, and New York City.
[122] Ocean liners on the Pacific route brought large numbers of migrants from East Asia to the Americas, especially the United States, which continued despite successive laws restricting Asian immigration to the United States; the journey typically took three weeks, with many impoverished migrants travelling in steerage class conditions.
In 1873 RMS Atlantic struck an underwater rock and sank off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, killing at least 535 people.
