Did you know that Liverpool is the birthplace of Cunard?
From the very beginning, the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, universally called the Cunard Line, had its Headquarters in Liverpool. Cunard’s first ship, Britannia, departed on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Boston via Halifax on 4 July 1840.
The company originally opened offices in 1839 at 14 Water Street, and as the business prospered and expanded it moved – in August 1857 – to premises at 8 Water Street, on the corner with Rumford Street.
8 Water Street soon became the hub of an enormous empire, concerned not just with shipping across the Atlantic to the United States and Canada, but also with routes to ports in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. By 1877 the company had 46 vessels – 19 on the Atlantic run, 12 in the Mediterranean and Black Sea services, and a further 13 serving Glasgow, Northern Ireland and Bermuda.
By this time emigration to the US had begun in earnest, and travel arrangements of amazing complexity were engineered through Cunard’s Water Street office.
The first recorded visit by a senior royal to a Cunard ship took place in Liverpool on 11 July 1913 when His Majesty King George V and Her Majesty Queen Mary visited the Mauretania. Since then every reigning monarch has visited or travelled on Cunard ships, as have a great many other senior royals.
Following a further half-century of growth Cunard was ready to construct its own magnificent landmark headquarters. The Cunard Building was a construction on a massive scale. Built of 180,000 cu feet of Portland Stone, with 50,000 cu feet of Italian marble, the building’s design was based on the Farnese Palace in Rome – the family home of Pope Paul III.
The Cunard Empire was ruled from the fifth floor, with its Boardroom and the pivotal naval architects’ department. Over 1,000 Cunard staff worked in the building.
On the ground floor was the enormous and magnificent pillared ticket hall and lounge for First Class passengers. Second and third class passengers were dealt with in the first basement – including, for emigrants, compulsory medical examinations.
Cunard moved into its prestigious new building, its third and last in Liverpool, in June 1916 and it remained there for over fifty years.
But by 1967, the focus of Cunard activity had shifted away from Liverpool; it remained Cunard’s administrative centre, but everything administered was elsewhere. After 128 years in the city, Cunard’s Head Office moved to New York in 1967 while its operational base moved to Southampton.
Sylvania’s departure for New York on 30 November 1967 would be the last sailing from Liverpool direct to New York but the final sailing from Liverpool would be made by Franconia on 30 January 1968 to Bermuda and then New York. Interestingly Cunard announced that sailings had been ‘suspended’ from Liverpool and not formally stopped.
All that remained of Cunard, housed in humbler quarters, was the cargo division. To all intents and purposes, Cunard had left home.
