It’s the original form of long-haul travel. Long before the era of affordable international flights or long-distance rail journeys, people were getting from one country to another the quickest way they could: by sea. From wooden schooners to early paddle steamers, we take a look at the earliest cruise ships ever to sail the waves, and how they evolved into the giant floating leisure centres we see today.
Click or scroll on to discover some of the earliest photos of cruise ships on the high seas...
P&O is widely credited as the world’s oldest cruise line and can trace its history back as far as 1837, when the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company won its first contract from the British government to deliver mail to Spain and Portugal. In the 1840s their routes expanded to Egypt, India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Penang (Malaysia), Singapore, Hong Kong and more. The company was renamed the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company – P&O for short.
This ship is the company's Royal Mail SS India, pictured some decades later.
Hot on P&O’s heels came Samuel Cunard, a war veteran and Nova Scotia timber merchant who ran the first steam-powered ferries on Canada's Atlantic coast. He later branched out into ocean steamers, and completed the Cunard company’s first transatlantic crossing in 1840, before carrying English author Charles Dickens from Britain to Boston shortly after. The crew kept cows on board to provide fresh milk, though there was no getting attached – they were slaughtered for meat on the final day of each voyage.
Pictured here is the Saxonia, a steamship that ran transatlantic crossings for Cunard later in the century.
P&O had lucrative mail contracts sewn up for years, sending letters and passengers as far as Australia and expanding to Mauritius and the Philippines en route. But the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (pictured) put all that in jeopardy. P&O had held a near-monopoly on access to the East, but the canal levelled the playing field by connecting the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean via Egypt. The shift prompted P&O to invest in much bigger ships, with a fleet of four Jubilee-class steamers launching just in time to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.
The first ship from the Netherlands-American Steamship Company – later the Holland America Line – took its name from the Dutch city Rotterdam, from which it sailed on its maiden voyage in 1872. With Captain Jacob Hus at the helm and just 70 passengers, the 1,700-tonne ship paused at Plymouth before crossing the Atlantic to New York. This would become a familiar route, including for the successor ship Rotterdam II (pictured).
Over the coming decades, Holland America would carry around 10% of the European immigrants making their way to the US.
The Dutch weren’t the only ones transporting people across the pond in search of a better life, and Cunard estimates that its ships carried more than a million of the 2.5 million immigrants that settled in the USA during the 1880s. The line was also at the forefront of cruising innovation, introducing the first flushing toilets at sea in 1870 and launching the steel-built ship Servia (pictured) in 1881, the first of its kind to feature electric lights.
Those creature comforts were a key step in making cruise travel more appealing, and transatlantic shipping company the Hamburg America Line (which later became Hapag-Lloyd Cruises), took them up a notch with the grand steamship Augusta Victoria (pictured), which set sail on 28 January 1891. Named after the German empress, it claimed to be the world’s first ‘pleasure cruise’, calling at 14 ports including Gibraltar, Genoa and Constantinople (Istanbul), where even the Ottoman sultan came out to greet the arriving ship.
Today Norwegian fjord cruises focus on scenery or spotting the Northern Lights, but when Norwegian company Hurtigruten launched its first coastal express service in July 1893, led by Captain Richard With, it was a much-needed link for local communities. Carrying passengers as well as mail and supplies to remote towns and villages along the shoreline, it was a vital connection between north and south – and the first service arrived in Hammerfest 45 minutes ahead of schedule. This ship, the DS Capella, would start sailing the route later in the decade.
By the turn of the 20th century, P&O’s fortunes had waxed and waned – from carrying 150,000 troops on behalf of the British government to the battlefields of the Boer War (pictured) to investing in the technology required to cut the journey time to India in half. After branching out from central London to a base at Tilbury in 1903, by the following year, P&O was running its first-ever pleasure cruise to the Mediterranean.
Enter the era of the 'super-liner', which began with the launches of Cunard’s 'floating palaces': the Lusitania in June 1906 and the Mauretania (pictured) in September, whose interiors wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Ritz. With turbine power, they were the largest and fastest ships ever built, together holding the 'Blue Riband' record for the quickest transatlantic crossing for 20 years. Unfortunately, the Lusitania's voyages ended in tragedy, as it was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank in May 1915.
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Cementing its US links, Holland America Line launched a ship known as Nieuw Amsterdam (pictured) – the original Dutch name for New York – in 1906. It was built at the same Belfast shipyard as the Titanic, but unlike many luxury liners, it had space for many more steerage-class passengers. There were 440 spaces in first class, 246 in second, 1,078 in third and 1,284 in 'tween deck' quarters, used mostly for immigrants travelling to America.
It was such an icon that Holland America still has a cruise ship known as Nieuw Amsterdam in its fleet today.
Cruising is full of traditions, many of which date back to its earliest days. Take Holland America Line’s Rotterdam (IV), the fourth to launch with that name in 1908. It drew inspiration from Europe’s finest hotels with its large, airy Palm Court (pictured), and was the first transatlantic vessel to feature a glass-enclosed promenade – perfect for strolling at sea, and still a mainstay of cruise ships to this day.
Another linchpin of cruise life is luxury dining, following in the footsteps of the grand dame hotels and restaurants of London, Paris, Berlin and beyond. Holland America Line’s Rotterdam (IV) was no exception (pictured here around 1910). Just like in the stately homes of the period, guests were expected to get their glad rags on every night and sit through multi-course meals featuring fine French-style cuisine with luxury ingredients like caviar and lobster – impressive work given the cramped galley kitchens chefs had to work from.
Forget packing Lycra and leggings – these Edwardian fitness fanatics decided to test out the gym in their full formal gear, three-piece suits and feather hat included. This photo was taken on board the RMS Franconia in 1911, the same year that the Cunard ship set off on its maiden voyage from Liverpool across the Atlantic to America. Gyms are nothing new for cruising, though the dress code has relaxed a little in the intervening years.
Perhaps the most famous and most photographed ocean liner of them all, the Titanic was a pinnacle of seafaring progress and was widely thought to be unsinkable – until fate proved otherwise. It was the White Star Line’s answer to Cunard’s shipping successes, launching from Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard in 1911 (pictured) and departing on its maiden voyage from Southampton on 10 April 1912. Disaster struck just five days later...
Cunard was the White Star Line's commercial rival, but it was a Cunard ship, the Carpathia (pictured), that came to the rescue of passengers and crew stranded by the sinking of the Titanic. While en route across the Atlantic carrying 740 passengers, the ship picked up a distress call at 12.20am on 15 April 1912, and travelled at top speed to the last-known position of the Titanic, some 58 miles (107km) away. The Carpathia rescued 705 souls from bobbing lifeboats, and Captain Arthur Henry Rostron was awarded the US Congressional Gold Medal for his efforts.
The advent of the First World War brought pleasure cruising to a halt, as most large ships were pressed into service as troop carriers to aid the war effort. That included the Empress of Britain, a transatlantic liner that was the sister ship to the Empress of Ireland, which famously sank in 1914 after a collision in thick fog on the St Lawrence River. The property of Canadian Pacific Ships, the Empress of Britain is seen here transporting Canadian troops out of Liverpool Docks in May 1919.
Despite significant losses of both ships and personnel, it didn’t take long for cruising to get back up and running when the First World War finished. By 1922, Cunard was already charting the course for its first round-the-world voyage – today a mainstay of the cruise calendar – onboard RMS Laconia (pictured). Departing in November, the 130-day voyage visited Japan, Singapore, Egypt and India en route back to New York, passing through the still-new Panama Canal along the way.
With plenty of time on their hands, as they circumnavigated the globe, passengers on Laconia found various ways to keep busy. Activities ranged from clay pigeon shooting and fencing to attending history lectures and learning new camera skills at the onboard photography club, according to the diaries of the voyage left behind by 20-something sisters Eleanor and Claudia Phelps.
The Holland America Line was known for its ‘spotless fleet’ and innovative cruises. During the Roaring Twenties, the company made some bold moves, including its first foray into Caribbean cruising, a 'floating university' voyage that blended student education with travel and the launch of its first three-funnel liner, Statendam III. This photo shows passengers onboard the latest Rotterdam cruise ship in 1929.
As ships switched from coal to oil, there was less need to hide dirt with dark exteriors. Enter P&O’s 'White Sisters', a series of five ships with white liveries that were cleaner and cooler when sailing in the tropics. Strathnaver and Strathaird launched in 1931 on the Australia mail run – the first P&O ships to feature portholes and running water in every cabin – swiftly followed by Strathmore, Stratheden (pictured) and finally Strathallan, which was launched in 1937.
Deck games have always been a feature of travelling by ship, with the need to keep everyone gainfully occupied during day after day at sea. These players on board the steam-powered ocean liner Lapland, built in Belfast for the Belgian Red Star Line, are having a go at shuffleboard, an activity you’ll still see on many of today’s most popular ships. The photo was taken in 1933, shortly before the Lapland was scrapped.
If you think yoga on the sun deck is a 21st-century invention, think again. These flexible female staff from the London and North Eastern Railway company – which also operated vessels on key transport routes – were photographed in July 1933 onboard the SS Vienna, giving a demonstration of how to stay fit even while out on the water.
The Art Deco-style Queen Mary (pictured) pushed the boundaries of size, style and speed at sea, although it faced a few hiccups along the way. Construction of the flagship began in 1930 following the merger of bitter rivals Cunard and White Star Line but was delayed by the Great Depression. It was christened by its namesake royal in 1934 (some say it was supposed to be a tribute to Queen Victoria, until King George V stepped in to name it after his wife), and later found a new lease of life as a hotel and attraction anchored off Long Beach, California.
The greatest contemporary rival to the Queen Mary came from just across the Channel, where the French Line (officially the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique) cut a fine form with the elegant ocean liner SS Normandie, which set sail in 1935. With a futuristic, streamlined exterior and gloriously ornate interiors, the ship was lauded for its unashamedly luxurious French style and was, by some estimates, the most expensive passenger ship ever built at the time. This photo shows passengers strolling its decks in 1937.
The Normandie was vaunted for its sophistication and sleek design and could have gone on to be a style icon for decades. In reality, it sailed for less than five years. The ship was laid up in New York in 1939 as the Second World War spread through Europe, and was being refitted as a troop carrier in February 1942 when a stray spark caught fire and set the whole ship alight.
Within just a few hours, the Normandie lay capsized in New York Harbor (pictured), and it remained there until it was sold off for scrap metal at the end of the war.
The return to war in 1939 saw many cruise ships taken into service, and it was two British icons – Queen Mary and the new Queen Elizabeth (pictured) – that were credited by Winston Churchill with helping shorten the war by a year. The Cunard ships were built to carry 3,200 passengers apiece but were refitted to hold 15,000 troops on each transatlantic crossing. The swimming pools were turned into bunks and the first-class dining room became the mess hall.
One journey on the Queen Mary saw 16,683 people squeeze in – still a record today.
Classic 1954 film On the Waterfront (pictured) is famous for featuring A-lister Marlon Brando delivering one of his most famous lines – "I coulda been a contender" – but it also brought cruising to the big screen. Filmed in the port city of Hoboken, New Jersey, home of Holland America Line ships since 1882, it features Nieuw Amsterdam (II) and the cargo ship Abbedyk in the background.
Fascination with life at sea showed no signs of slowing down in the 1950s, with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth, Judy Garland, Vera Lynn, Noel Coward and Walt Disney boarding Cunard ships, plus America’s very own Ozzie and Harriet, seen in this photo on the SS United States with sons Ricky, 14, and David, 17. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that TV show The Love Boat – set on board a Princess Cruises ship – saw cruising truly hit the big time on the small screen.
One of the most enduring images from the history of cruising is the late Queen Elizabeth II christening her namesake ship – built on home soil in Clydebank, Scotland – on 20 September 1967 (pictured). The ship cost around £30 million ($39m) and went on to transport troops to the Falkland Islands during the Falklands War in 1982. The QE2 travelled more than six million miles (9.7 million km) and carried more than 2.5 million passengers before being retired in 2008.
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