A hardback book covering the design, construction and service of Cunard’s four-funnelled express liner Aquitania.
There were only ever fourteen four-funnel express liners in maritime history. Some of these were short-lived, some went in a blaze of publicity, others worked long and hard for their owners. One of the most enduring and endearing of these was Aquitania. Her first three commercial North Atlantic crossings in 1914 were a triumph. Then the dark clouds of war descended and life changed.
The Great War
Aquitania proudly gave four years of service to her country, first as an armed merchant cruiser, then as a troopship and finally as a hospital ship.
Aquitania’s peacetime service
Once the hostilities were over, Aquitania resumed her peacetime service and quickly became popular with all classes of travellers. Although she never fought for the Blue Riband, she was still one of the fastest liners on the route. Increasing US immigration restrictions, Prohibition, the Great Depression: all flowed over her as she plowed a steady, profitable furrow across the Atlantic. Short and long cruises were incorporated into her schedules without pausing.
World War II
With the advent of yet another war, she was soon requisitioned as a troopship, giving six years of hard work around the world.
Peacetime again
Her last few years after World War Two were repatriating American and Canadian troops, German prisoners of war and war brides, before carrying emigrants to their new lives in a new world. She was finally scrapped in 1950, the last of her type, a true historic liner.
162 pages plus three A3 throw-out deck plans.
£38.00 plus shipping
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