The focus on the carriage of passengers really took off with
the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 1800’s.
Stopford[1]
summaries the development such:
“Between 1833 and
1914 every aspect of ship design changed. The hull grew from 176ft. to 901ft
and gross tonnage from 137 tons to 45,647 tons. Hull construction switched from
wood to iron in the 1850s, from iron to steel in the 1880s, paddle propulsion
was replaced in the 1980’s by screws driven by steam engines. Triple expansion
steam engines arrived in the 1880s and turbines from 1900. Speed increased from
7 knots per hour in 1833 to 25 knots per hour in 1907, and fuel consumption
from around 20 tons a day to 1,000 tons a day.”
So technology supplied the opportunity to build bigger and
faster ships but without a demand for their services ocean liners would never
have developed as they did.
Two main drivers of demand were instrumental in promoting
the rise of the ocean liner.
First emigration, particularly from Europe continued the trend started in the era of the sailing ship and secondly the need to have regular scheduled services for the delivery of mail.
Emigration
In Australia the influx of convict immigrants continued
until the late 1800’s after which many free settlers arrived driven from their
homes in the UK by the Scottish [4]clearances
and the potato famine in Ireland.Similarly Norwegian citizens fled from their country predominantly to the USA. [5]Between 1820 and 1925 as many as 860,000 Norwegians emigrated to the U.S. The driving forces for this mass migration were mixed from lack of farming land to an economic recession.[6]
The shipowners
Shipowners from the era of sail continued after the advent of steam.
Samuel Cunard was the first shipowner to establish a transatlantic service with
the paddle steamers Britannia. He received the contract to deliver mail thus
enabling him to designate his ship RMS Britannia[7]
(Royal Mail Ship). His fleet grew to be the predominate ocean liner fleet in
the world and even today he operates one transatlantic service every year with
the cruise ship Queen Victoria.[8]
Another English shipping company started life with a
scheduled service to Australia from the UK. The White Star Line had many
financial issues and it changed hands many times[9]
until finally it commenced a transatlantic service competing with Cunard. It
was the White Star Line that operated the fateful ship Titanic.
It did not take long before most of the European maritime
nations started their own transatlantic liner service and later the USA started
a service.
The Orient Line was another British liner company that operated to Australia from the UK with mail
and passenger services. [10]An association with the Peninsular and Orient line that operated between the UK and Spain and Portugal resulted in a merger in 1966. The emergence of a mail and liner service to Australia continued until the early 1970’s when the S.S. Canberra[11] was transferred to cruise activities.
The last ship to hold the Blue Riband was the S.S. United States and in 1952 she averaged 34.51 knots taking 3 days 10 hours and 40 minutes on the eastbound voyage. With a capacity of just under 2000 passengers[13] she accommodated first class passengers at a starting price of $350 and tourist class passengers at $295 for the voyage[14]. Built to American military standards to double as a troop carrier her design was to provide comfort at speed. The use of aluminium in the superstructure significantly reduced her overall weight.[15]
Many of the ocean liners were built to double as troop
carriers and
The second World War also accelerated the building of large
aircraft and that produced the first long
distance airline operations. Once
again it was technology, this time in terms of aircraft development that
brought about the demise of ocean liner services.
The arrival of the first jet engine commercial aircraft in
1949, the DE Haviland Comet with a capacity of 44 passengers, and its first
commercial flight from London to Johannesburg in 1952 was the signal event
marking the decline in liner transport of passengers[17].
In 1958 the first commercial transatlantic flight between
London and New York took place operated by BOAC with its Comet aircraft. The
eastbound flight took 6 hours and 11 minutes whilst the westbound flight took
10 hours and 22 minutes carrying 31 passengers with a refuelling stop at Gander
in Newfoundland.[18]
There followed a rapid rise in aircraft development and
commercial airline operations to the extent by the early 1960’s 95% of
transatlantic passenger transport was by airlines.[19]
References
[1] Stopford, Martin, Maritime Economics.
[2] ‘RMS Queen Elizabeth’.
[3] ‘U.s. Immigration by Year Graph - Google
Search’.
[4] ‘Australia’s Immigration History’.
[5] ‘Norwegian Immigration to the US -
English (General Studies) - NDLA’.
[6] ‘Nordic Immigrants’.
[7] ‘Britannia’.
[8] ‘Cruise Ships’.
[9] ‘White Star Line’.
[10] ‘P&O’.
[11] ‘S.s. Canberra - Google Search’.
[12] ‘Great Ocean Liners | Blue Riband’.
[13] ‘1986.016.0002 SS United States’.
[14] Grace, ‘SS UNITED STATES – 1952 – Five
Nights at Sea – from New York to Europe – First Class Fares $350 and Up…’.
[15] ‘SS United States’.
[16] ‘Cunard Ship Troop Carriers - Google
Search’.
[17] Editors, ‘First Commercial Jet Makes Test
Flight’.
[18] Cross, ‘10/04/1958’.
[19] ‘Ocean Liner’.
