Samuel Cunard's first ship, the Britannia, made it first voyage from Liverpool in England to the US in 1850. In those days, there was a little choice of means of travel. Anyone who wished to go to the US from Britain had to sail across the Atlantic. Apart from that, there was no way of getting there. The Britannia was above all a mail ship, but it also took passengers. On that first ocassion, as records show, there was a total of 63 of them, including Samuel Cunard and his daughter and , remarkably for that time, the ship had private bathrooms.
But Samuel Cunard would find it hard to see much similarity between his beloved Britannia and the Cunard company's most famous liner today, the QE2, named after Queen Elizabeth II of England. The Britannia is unlikely to have had two members of staff to every passenger.The passengers probably didn't sleep in cabins as comfortable and with as much space as rooms in a good class of hotel, as they do on the QE2 today.
The QE2 set off on her first voyage across the Atlantic from Southampton on the south coast of England on May 2 1969. Five days after, she arrived in New York to an enthusiastic welcome. Since that day she has carried over one and a half million passengers around the world.