Customer Reviews

Cunard: A Photographic History (Revealing History)

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Cunard has been around for the last 165 years. This is a table-coffee book of 96 pages. Something light to hold in your hands while you sip your coffee. It is full of pictures to dazzle your eyes and bring back memories of bygone years. Its an easy read too, although the narrative seems a bit halting, but this is to be expected in a book devoted to photographs. These photos are, after all, the main attraction. The narrative informs the reader about the history and significance of each picture in the book and about the social and historical context. Every page is filled with photographs of the various Cunard ships from the time when Samuel Cunard first built his Royal Mail ships that, by the way, also carried passengers. Divided roughly into three parts, the book traces the history of the company from its founding to the First World War, the years between the world wars and period after the Second World War till the present.

At the end of it, you get an appreciation not only of Cunard's history, but also of how circumstances and inventions of the day can affect the prosperity or survival of a company. For example, after World War II, air travel by Jet plane became popular and that took away Cunard's business of ferrying passengers across the Altantic. It eventually had to focus on the Cruise Liner business, for which it is best known today, at least for the holidaying crowd. However, you will want to read about its shipping business from the early days, and look at the marvellous ships it once used to own, including its Carpathia, which picked up 705 passengers from the sinking Titanic in 1912 and the Lusitania, Mauretania and the Aquitania - the fastest and biggest ships of its days.

Like the book on the White Star Line ships, this one is well done and features every participant in the long line of Cunard Line ships, even the ones who are not very well known or were owned for long within the company, and even those who were supposed to have been built but never were. I hope people take a look on account of how this line is reflective of British heritage and world heritage in the years their ships sailed. And, like the White Star Line, they strove for exellence and a good sence of what makes a good business. "Getting there is half the fun!", is certainly true if you sailed on a Cunard ship--such as the case today--using 'White Star Servcie' no less--a fitting tribute. This book is a fitting tribute to the Cunard Line. And the Cunard Line, like so many other great and small shipping companies over the last two hundered years, is itself a testement to civilization on the seas. :)

The long history of the famed Cunard ocean liner company is brought together in photographs. The Cunard name is associated with elegant transatlantic steamship travel in the early years of the 20th century. Today, the name is associated with cruise-ship vacations mostly in the Caribbean. In 1998, the remaining Cunard fleet was purchased by Carnival Corporation so that it could claim to be the owner of the world's largest cruise ship. By this time, parts of the Cunard steamship company had already been sold off; and Cunard was seen mostly as a remnant of a bygone era of ocean travel. The growth of the jet-plane industry after World War II brought the near-demise of Cunard.

Cunard's history goes back further than its heyday of the early 1900s. The British company was founded by Canadian Samuel Cunard in 1939. The first steamship was launched the following year. The company was named the British and North America Royal Mail Steam Ship Packet Company. But it soon came to be known simply as Cunard after its founder.

The most interesting photographs are the older ones of the early generation of ships with masts for sails in addition to the steam pipes. Photographs of Cunard liners in their World War II roles as troop carriers and hospital ships are of particular interest as well as this side of the company's history is not so widely known. The ships were not only luxury liners throughout the company's history of about 170 years. Color ads of various types including posters attract special interest too for artists' dramatic and fetching pictures of the impressive liners.

Most of the photographs are black-and-white ones from different periods. Many of these are straightforward photographs of different ships, possibly for nothing more than identification. There are photos of ships near docks with a waiting crowd or pulling into or leaving busy harbors which convey the excitement generated by the huge ocean liners, an excitement still aroused today. The text follows the overall course of the history of Cunard and highlights the moments of change. The balance of diverse period photographs, complementary illustrations, and informative text make for a companionable general history and visual record.

If you are purchasing this book from Amazon, be forewarned...for thirty four dollars you are receiving a paperback book. The title says both paperback and hardcover...they have not updated the site since I complained.

The book is gorgeous, and I agree with the other reviewer this is an amazing coffee table book...if it were hardcover.