In 1840, Samuel Cunard secured the first contract to carry mail by steamship between Britain and America, and to this day the cruise line that bears his name remains the most recognized in the world. The first ships were paddle steamers, the fastest vessels of their time, serving the route from Liverpool in England to Halifax and Boston in North America. In the early years of the 20th century, Cunard's flagships on the transatlantic route were the Mauretania and the Lusitania, the latter tragically sunk at the outset of World War I.

By the 1960s, though airplanes were taking over transatlantic travel, Cunard's flagship was the Queen Elizabeth 2 (usually shortened to QE2), a classic ocean liner built specifically for the North Atlantic passage. For more than 30 years the QE2 was the only ship sailing that route on a regular schedule. Carrying about 1,800 passengers, she was the epitome of luxury, strength, and speed in an age of jetliners and more prosaic cruise ships, delivering an old-fashioned Atlantic crossing filled with white-glove service, informal lectures, a preponderance of eating options, idle hours in the top-drawer spa or library, and much gazing out over the rail at the high seas.

In 2003, QE2 sailed her last transatlantic voyage, replaced by her younger----but much larger and more luxurious----sibling Queen Mary 2. The Queen Victoria joined the fleet in 2007, and a brand-new Queen Elizabeth followed in 2010. The three Cunard Queens cruise the world from the Caribbean to the Baltic, while the Queen Mary 2 continues the original Cunard legacy as the only ship to consistently ply the historic transatlantic route between Southampton and New York on a regular schedule.

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Location: Southampton, Hampshire, England

Website: www.cunard.com