THE SCOTTISH ADVENTURES OF A CRUISE SHIP ADDICT

As I am about to board one of my favourite ships - QE2 - this afternoon, I wanted to talk about her name.  Originally the name of Cunard's ships ended in -ia, eg Britannia, Carpathia, Bothnia. But when Cunard and the White Star Line (owners of the Titanic) merged in 1934, this created a problem as all White Star Line ships had the suffix -ic, eg Olympic, Cedric, Britannic.  The first Cunard White Star liner to be completed after this merger was Hull 534 at John Brown's Shipyard, in Clydebank, Scotland. What could they call her? Then someone had an idea. King George V was approached and officials asked if they could name the ship "after Britain's most illustrious Queen" - meaning Queen Victoria. The King replied, "of course you can name it after my wife". Thus the new liner ended up as Queen Mary. Now the original Queen Elizabeth liner, didn't have such problems as it was named after the Queen at the time - Queen Elizabeth.  The Queen Elizabeth 2 was ...

When Samuel Cunard's little 1,100 ton steamship Britannia chugged her way out of Liverpool towards the new world in 1840, it was amazing to think that she sparked a competition which is still around today. The race had started to build the biggest and fastest ships across the atlantic. These ocean greyhounds would attract the creme of society who would want the kudos of travelling on the newest and biggest ships. Immigrants were also attracted by the size and speed because this meant they could start their new lives faster and it was thought that the largest ships were also the safest! In fact, travellers in the early days of steamships were very influenced by funnel size - the more funnels a ship had the more safer and sophisticated it was! A few ships even had 'dummy' funnels in order to attract more passengers. Question: can you name all 13 four-funnelled ships? In 1840, the passenger ship was 1,100 tons (Britannia), by 1911, it was 45,000 tons (Olympic), by 1937, 79,200...