Ocean liner
An
ocean liner is a
passenger ship or passenger-cargo ship which tranports people and often freight from one port to another along regular trans-oceanic routes according to a schedule. The term also refers to vessels designed to engage in such trades, even if temporarily used for other purposes (such as on cruises or as
troopships). The category does not include
ferries or other vessels engaged in short-sea trading, nor
cruise ships where the voyage itself, and not transportation, is the prime purpose of the trip. Nor does it include
tramp steamers even if equipped to handle limited numbers of passengers, nor other cargo vessels (although many shipping companies refer to themselves as "lines" and their
container ships, which often operate over set routes according to established schedules, as "liners").
Ocean liners typically were strongly built with high
freeboards to withstand
sea states and adverse conditions encountered in the open ocean, and had large capacities for fuel and other stores which would be consumed on their multi-day or mulit-week voyages.
Ocean liners were the primary mode of intercontinental travel for over a century, from the mid-
19th century to the
1960s, when they were finally supplanted by
airliners. In addition to passengers, liners also carried
mail and cargo. Ship contracted to carry
British Royal Mail used the designation
RMS. Liners were also the preferred way to move gold and other high value cargos.
[Pickford, Nigel Lost Treasure Ships of the Twentieth Century, National Geographic Society, 1999 ISBN 0792274725]The busiest route for liners was on the
North Atlantic with ships traveling between
Europe and
North America. It was on this route that the fastest, largest and most advanced liners travelled. But while in contemporary popular imagination the term "ocean liners" evokes these
transatlantic superliners, most ocean liners historically were mid-sized vessels which served as the common carriers of passengers and freight between nations and among mother countries and their colonies and dependencies in the pre-jet age. Such routes included Europe to African and Asian colonies, Europe to South America, and migrant traffic from Europe to North America in the Nineteenth and first two decades of the Twentieth Centuries and to Canada and Australia after the Second World War.
A derivation of the word
liner is from the term "
ship of the line", a
warship capable of taking its place in the
Royal Navy's tactical
line of battle during the
Age of Sail. Shipping companies came to be known as "Shipping Lines" and hence their vessels were "ships of the line". An alternative derivation is based on the kind of trade carried out by liners. Regular scheduled voyages on a set route are called "line voyages" and vessels (passenger or cargo) trading on these routes to a timetable are called liners. The alternative to liner trade is "tramping" whereby vessels are notified on an ad-hoc basis as to the availability of a cargo to be transported. The term "Ocean Liner" has come to be used interchangeably with "Passenger Liner", although it can refer to a cargo liner or cargo- passenger liner.
The 19th Century
In 1818, Black Ball Line, with a fleet of
clipper ships, offered the first regular passenger service with emphasis on passenger comfort, from
England to
United States. From the early 1800s,
steam engines began to appear in ships, but initially they were inefficient and offered little advantage over
sailing ships.
The clipper domination was challenged when
SS Great Western, designed by railway engineer
Isambard Brunel, began its first Atlantic service in 1837. It took 29 days to cross the Atlantic compared to two months for sail powered ships. Unlike the clippers, the steamers offer a consistent speed and the ability to keep up schedules. The early
steam ships still had sails as well though, as engines at this time still required large quantities of fuel. Having sails enabled vessels like the
Great Western to take advantage of favourable weather conditions and minimise fuel consumption.
In 1840,
Cunard Line's Britannia began its first regular passenger and cargo service by a
steamship, sailing from Liverpool to Boston. Despite some advantages offered by the steamships, clippers remained dominant. In 1847,
SS Great Britain became the first screw driven ship with an iron hull to cross the Atlantic. More efficient
propellers began to replace bulkier
paddle wheels, found on earlier ocean liners.
In 1870,
White Star Line's
RMS Oceanic set a new standard for ocean travel by placing the first class cabin amidships, adding large portholes and offering running water and electricity. The size of ocean liners increased from 1880 onward because of massive immigration to United States.
The 20th Century
|
The RMS Mauretania at sea. |
The period between the end of the
19th century and
World War II is considered the "golden age" of ocean liners. Driven by strong demand created by European emigration to the United States and Canada, international competition between passenger lines and a new emphasis on comfort, shipping companies built ever larger and faster ships.
Canadian Pacific Railway became one of the largest transportation system in the world combining with ships and railways operating from
Canada. In 1891 CPR shipping division began its first Pacific operation. In 1903, CPR began its first Atlantic service because of rising migration of Europeans to
western Canada as the result of free land offered by the
Canadian government.
Since the 1830s ships had unofficially been competing for the honour of making the fastest Atlantic crossing. This honour came to be known as the
Blue Riband; in 1897 Germany took the award with a series of new ocean liners, starting with the
SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Große. In 1905, British company Cunard fitted their liner
Carmania with steam turbines and it outperformed its near identical sister
Caronia, which was powered by triple expansion steam engines. At the time, these were the largest ships in the Cunard fleet, and the use of the differant propulsion methods in otherwise similar ships allowed the company to evaluate the merits of both. The engines in
Carmania proved to be a success and consequently in 1907, the Cunard Line introduced the much larger
Lusitania and
Mauritania, both powered by
steam turbines. The Mauritania would go on to hold the Blue Riband for an astonishing 20 years.
Cunard's dominance of the Blue Riband did not keep other lines from competing in terms of size and luxury. In 1910 White Star launched the
Olympic, the first of a trio of 45,000 plus gross ton liners that was also to include the
Titanic and
Britannic. These ships were almost 15,000 tonnes larger and 100 feet longer then the Lusitania and Mauritania.
Hamburg-America Line also ordered three giant ships,
Imperator,
Vaterland and
Bismarck; all over 51,500 gross tons. The first of these ships, Imperator, was launched in 1912. The largest, Bismarck, would be the largest ship in the world until 1935. These ships would see little or no service with Hamburg-America before World War I. After the war they were seized as war reparations and given to British and American lines.
The surge in ocean liner's size outpaced the shipping regulations. In 1912 Titanic sunk after hitting an iceberg, claiming more than 1,500 lives. A factor contributing to the high loss of life was that there were not enough
lifeboats for everyone. After the Titanic disaster, the regulation was revised to require all ocean liners to carry enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew. In addition,
International Ice Patrol was established to monitor the busy north Atlantic shipping lanes for icebergs.
Until the 1920's most shipping lines relied heavily on emigration for sales and they were hard hit when the
US Congress introduced a bill to limit immigration into the
United States. As the result, many ships took on
cruising and the least expensive cabins were reconfigured from third class to tourist class. To make matters worse, the great depression put many shipping lines into bankruptcy.
Despite the harsh economic conditions, a number of companies continued to build larger and faster ships. In 1929 the German ships
Bremen and
Europa beat the crossing record set by the Mauritania 20 years earlier with an average speed of almost 28 knots. The ships used
bulbous bows and oil fired boilers to reach these high speeds while maintaining economical operating costs. In 1935 the French liner
SS Normandie used a revolutionary new hull design and powerful
turbo-electric propulsion to take the Blue Riband from the Italian
Rex. Because of the poor economic conditions the British government forced Cunard Line and White Star Line to merge. The newly merged company countered with its liners
RMS Queen Mary and
RMS Queen Elizabeth; the
Queen Mary was to hold the Blue Riband from 1936-37 and 1938-52.
The post World War II era was a brief but busy period. Notable transatlantic liners included the
SS United States, which was the last ocean liner to hold the Blue Riband and the
SS France, which held the record for the longest passenger ship from when she entered service in 1961 until the launch of
RMS Queen Mary 2 in 2003. Australian Government sponsored immigration resulted in a busy trade between Europe and Australia, producing such notable ships as the
SS Oriana and
SS Canberra. These two, operating on the
P&O-
Orient Line service, were the last, largest and fastest liners built for the Australian route.
The End
|
The SS Norway, formally SS France, docked in Bremerhaven, Germany. Despite a very successful career as a cruse ship, her current owners plan to scrap her rather then pay for an expensive and needed overhaul. |
Prior to World War II,
aircraft weren't a huge threat to ocean liners. Most of these aircraft were noisy, cramped and vulnerable to bad weather. However, World War II accelerated the development of aircraft. Four engine bombers such as the
Avro Lancaster and
Boeing B-29, with their massive carrying capacity were a natural prototype for a next generation
airliner.
Jet aircraft technology also accelerated after Germany developed jet aircraft for military use in World War II. In 1953,
De Havilland Comet became the first commercial jet airliner and later followed by
Sud Aviation Caravelle,
Boeing 707 and
Douglas DC-8. In the 1960s airlines gradually took over the business formally done by ocean liners. By the early 1970s passenger ships were used almost exclusively for cruising.
After the end of the large scale passenger liner business, many ships continued in use as cruise ships; as of 2003 a small number of former liners were still in service. A few more, such as RMS Queen Mary, are still afloat but permanently docked and used for other purposes; in the case of the Queen Mary, as a museum ship. The only large liner still used on scheduled line voyages in 2006 is Cunard Line's
RMS Queen Mary 2, which replaced the line's
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 on the transatlantic route in 2004. QE2 made its maiden voyage in 1969 and was the only major operational ocean liner for several decades, but now is given over to cruising.
Ocean liners played a huge role in
World War I. Large ocean liners, such as
RMS Mauretania and
RMS Olympic, were used as
troopships and
hospital ships while smaller ocean liners were converted to armed merchant cruisers. The
Britannic, sister to the
Titanic and
Olympic, never served on the liner trade for which she was built, instead entering war service as a hospital ship as soon as she was completed; she lasted a year before being sunk by a mine. Some other liners were converted to
Q-ships purposely designed to hunt down
submarines. In 1915, RMS
Lusitania was torpedoed by German
U-boat, despite its speed and supposed non-military role. Germany justified the attack because Lusitania was carrying military cargoes, which was later confirmed.
Ocean liners such as the
Queen Mary and
Queen Elizabeth were used once again used in World War II, although not as merchant cruisers; they were mostly used as troop ships and hospital ships. The
SS Normandie sailed to the
United States in 1942 for conversion to a troop ship, but never saw service in that role. A fire during the conversion work caused her to sink in
New York. Salvage attempts failed and she was scrapped in 1946. More recently, during the
Falklands War, three ships that were either active or former liners were requisitioned for war service by the
British Government. The
Cunard liner
QE2 and
P&O cruise ship and former
England to
Australia liner
Canberra served as troop ships, carrying
British Army personnel to
Ascension Island and the
Falkland Islands to recover the Falklands from the invading
Argentine forces. The
P&O educational cruise ship and former
British India Steam Navigation Company liner
Uganda was requisitioned as a hospital ship, and after the war served as a troop ship until an
airport was built at
Port Stanley that could handle
RAF trooping flights.
The most well-known liner was the
RMS Titanic, infamous for sinking on her maiden voyage from Britain to the United States in 1912 with the loss of 1,523 lives. In 1914 the
RMS Empress of Ireland sank in the
Saint Lawrence River with 1,012 lives lost. The
RMS Lusitania was lost in 1915 to a German
U-Boat during World War I while on passage from the United States to Britain. The worst disasters were the loss of the
RMS Lancastria in 1940 off Saint-Nazaire, France to German bombing with the loss of over 3,000 lives and the sinking of the
Wilhelm Gustloff in the
Baltic Sea with over 9000 lives lost in 1945. Italian liner
SS Andrea Doria sunk after colliding with
SS Stockholm under heavy fog in 1956, despite of the fact that Andrea Doria was fitted with
RADAR. The Cunard Line's
RMS Mauretania and
RMS Aquitania was widely considered the finest of all the liners of its generation and in decades following many had a similar devotion to the
SS Normandie.
*
List of ocean liners*
Transatlantic*
Encyclopedia Titanica (includes Ocean liner and Titanic discussions)
*
Gare Maritime : A Journey into the Golden Age of Travel
*
20th Centuy Ships*
The Great Ocean Liners*
Monsters of the Sea: The Great Ocean Liners of Time*
Martin Cox and Peter Knego's "Maritime Matters"*
The Last Ocean Liners 1950s-1960s*
Kevin Tam's "Ships of State:The Great Atlantic Liners"*
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