Floating Palaces: The Great Atlantic Liners

This episode opens with the QEII preparing to travel west to New York City. As the narrator notes, the QEII came into service just months before the first moon landing and her design ethos reflects that era. But, the QEII harkens farther back into history as the descendant of a long line of ships of note. While the earliest ships were built for the mail business, they eventually grew to embrace immigration from Europe to America.

Episode 2 opens with the final night aboard the QEII as she approaches the end of her latest voyage to New York. J.P. Morgan was an American tycoon who wanted to dominate all forms of passenger and cargo traffic. He already had monopolies with many shipping lines and railroads, but he wanted total control. To this end, he instituted a ruinous price war that had an unexpected result: the financial aid of the British government to build Cunard's Aquatania, Lusitania and Mauritania, among the most beautiful and speedy liners of the Golden Age of trans-Atlantic travel.

This episode opens with the QEII leaving New York on her 999th voyage. The close of WWI saw many of the great liners lost as casualties, such as the Lusitania and the Britannic. With blame for the war laid at Germany's feet, her fleet was seized as reparations for the victors. The peacetime also saw an end to immigration with newly enacted quotas in the United States, forcing ship owners to woo the new rising middle class with cheaper fares and modified accommodations (formerly 3rd class, now "Tourist" class). Yet, even with the advent of the Great Depression, some of the most beloved liners of the Art Deco and Modern Age came into existence, like the Normandie and the Queen Mary.

This episode opens with the QEII in the mid-ocean east bound from New York to her home port of Southampton. In the 1920s and 30s the Atlantic greyhounds returned to the ocean, as glorious hotels and ships of state. And when a new war presents greater and more difficult problems on the Atlantic battlefield, it will inspire the great ships to serve their finest hour - some will become legends in their time. This then is the continuing story of the great floating palaces of the North Atlantic.