Meeting Report 17th April 2024

Tony Taft reports:-
Today we had an attendance of 23 with 2 apologies

Our speaker was John Airey on the subject of the History of Cunard.

John has a history in local politics and worked as a town planner, I had a private conversation with John before the presentation and he told me his interests are trains planes and ships, he told me that he traveled on the last cruise of the QE2.

John has given a talk for us before and on that occasion he told us all about delta winged aircraft I think he called it the the V Force, so maybe our next talk by John will be about trains, so that should be interesting if it happens.

John’s talk started on the life of Samuel Cunard who lived in Halifax Nova Scotia and it was Samuel who came up with the concept of a fleet of ships sailing between North America and the United Kingdom.

Samuel commissioned the construction of three 960 ton vessels to be built at the Clyde shipyards and so began a regular service not only transporting passengers but also mail between the two countries.

It was not a life of luxury for the passengers on those first ships their cabins were very small consisting of two beds a small sofa and a wash basin and when you consider the length of time it took to cross the Atlantic in those days life on board would have been tough.

John then went on at great length to give us in depth information about the various vessels that were eventually built up to this present day and information about his competitors like the White Star line we all remember the Titanic which was a White Star ship.

John gave us an excellent visual presentation showing us drawings and photographs of all of the ships and in some cases their fate, not all of the early ships made it to their destination John also explained the technical aspects of each ship not only their engine power because an increase in speed was always the goal but the advance in luxury so as to make travel crossing the Atlantic a pleasurable experience for their passengers.

Eventually it was possible to get to the other side much faster by air and the thought of being on a ship for the length of time it would take was no longer popular with the public and we all know how that ended.

John gave us an excellent talk and maybe at some future date he could give us a talk on trains, it was clear to see that John had spent a lot of time doing extensive research putting this talk together, this is a new talk for John so we were the first club to hear it, I think a little bit of editing is needed to bring the presentation down to an hour but saying that we all enjoyed seeing John again and hope we will again soon.