Limited air travel might force some to consider a ship from Europe to America.
I’ve heard stories that a cross Atlantic trip is five weeks or more.
Have travel times by ship improved since the luxury liner days 70 years ago?
Anyone know a source that list travel times by ship?
I realize few people would attempt a ship crossing. Planes will certainly resume flights within the next couple weeks. Once you get on a ship, your stuck.
Britain has announced that they are sending ships to pickup some of their citizens stranded in Europe.
They too all kinds of detours and zig-zagged and whathaveyou so they wouldn’t get torpedoed by German subs. Such maneuvers take time and also, modern cruise ships are quite fast.
A ship traveling at 20 knots can make the 2,967 nautical mile run from Southampton to New York in 148 hours (6.2 days).
I did some flank-speed runs across the Atlantic by submarine years ago. I could tell you how fast we did it, but then I’d have to kill you. The official speed of my submarine was “20+ knots.”
A ship that took five weeks to cross the Atlantic would be making an average speed of about 3.5 knots, which is barely fast enough to even maintain steerage with its rudder (i.e. steerage way). Even 70 years ago, ships didn’t go that slow.
Yes, the Titanic in 1912 IIRC was trying to set a speed record, but they left Southampton on Apr.10 and hit an iceberg not far from Newfoundland/Nova Scotia the evening of the 14th. Schedule claims they would have been in New York the morning of the 17th. The ship was big and fast, but not much faster than anything else in its class.
I’d never thought much about transatlantic ship travel. Other than old movies and troop ships during the world wars. I’ve seen clips of famous movie stars crossing the Atlantic in the 1930’s. But, they didn’t say how long the trip took.
I’m sure every available passenger ship is booked solid right now.
Going back as far as 1838, it was possible to cross the Atlantic in less than 15 days. Passenger liners at the turn of the century were regularly crossing in about 5-6 days, and the fastest crossing by a steam ship was 3 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes in 1952.
Here is Wikipedia’s list of the winners of the Blue Riband, an unofficial prize for the ocean liner with the fastest trans-Atlantic crossing. Before the liners went the way of the dinosaurs, the United States made the crossing in about three-and-a-half days.
Note that there is something of a distinction between ocean liners and cruise ships. Cruise ships are built for dinking around the Caribbean. You go on a cruise to spend time on the ship, so what’s the rush? You spend the day on one island, have dinner on board, and wake up ready to explore a new island. Nothing wrong with that.
The ocean liners were a way of moving people from one side of an ocean to the other. Before jet airliners came on the scene in the late '50s, they were pretty much the only way to go. The liners were built for speed, partly for competition and prestige, but also for economics. The faster you could make the crossing, the more crossings you could make in a year (and the more fare-paying passengers you could carry).
There aren’t that many. The QM2 is the state-of-the-art, and it might also be the only game in town. Almost no one uses liners anymore. That’s the only one I know of.
Even taking an indirect route and zig-zagging to avoid u-boats, it shouldn’t have taken that long. WWII convoys would travel at about 10 knots, which would give roughly a 2 week crossing time.
I think the idea is that the cruise ships are in the Caribbean in the winter, and Europe and the Mediterranean in the summer. While you’re moving the ship from one to the other, might as well sell tickets.
Which also means that if you’re stuck in Europe right now and want to get back to the U.S., everything except the QM2 is going the wrong way.
I’ve travelled 4 times between Europe and Australia by ship. I don’t remember the first time (I was 2 years old at the time), but I remember the other three (being 9, 15 and 16 then). Going via the Suez Canal, it took about 4 weeks from England to Australia. I suspect it would be about the same time now – big ships aren’t that much faster these days.
Liners were used as troop ships in World War 2, especially in the North Atlantic. My dad made the transit east on the Queen Mary in 1943, and returned home on the Queen Elizabeth in 1946, in each case along with 12,000-15,000 of his closest friends. Imagine 5-high bunks everywhere. In each case it took about a week, as those ships went fast.
Modern day cruise ships that make transatlantic cruises for repositioning purposes don’t have the legs of the old liners, and make significantly slower crossings.
Obviously, more than it costs to fly. It also depends on what sort of a cabin you travel in: do you want to go in a six-berth cabin with barely enough room for two people to stand up in, and toilets and showers shared with other cabins, or do you want a two-bed suite with separate living room and bathroom?
The official speed of my submarine was “20+ knots.”