Word: cunarder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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While the Queens were known to be sailing in financial straits, Cunard was not expected to phase out Mary until late 1968, hoped to keep Elizabeth in operation for as long as ten more years. But the ships together have been losing more than $3,000,000 a year, and, as Sir Basil Smallpeice, chairman of the Cunard group, put it at the London press conference, "We cannot allow our affections or our sense of history to divert us from our aim of making Cunard again a thriving company...
Jampacked G.l.s. Designed as a tandem team for providing weekly passenger service across the North Atlantic, the Queens were the culmination of a dream born in 1840 when Samuel Cunard's Britannia became the first regularly scheduled transatlantic liner. At the time that the 80,000-ton Queen Mary made her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in May 1936, only the French Line's Normandie could rival her for size and speed.* Within six months, work was underway on her even bigger sister ship, the 83,000-ton Queen Elizabeth, whose maiden trip to New York...
...elegant surroundings. As time passed, the ships' 1930s-style trappings made them seem dowdy to travelers with new ideas about opulence. Hurt by jet-age airline competition, the Queens also lost potential passengers to sleeker French and Italian ocean liners. By 1961 the ships were losing money, and Cunard began putting them on winter cruises in an effort to make ends meet. Last year alone, the line spent $4,200,000 remodeling the Queen Elizabeth...
...Queens' nagging troubles threatened to torpedo the entire group of Cunard companies. In 1965 Cunard lost $7,560,000 on the Queens and its five other passenger ships, turned a slender $520,000 before-taxes profit only because of income from freighters and other investments. Last year's British seamen's strike, which cost Cunard more than $10 million in revenues, speeded the demise of the Queens...
Winter Scheme. Sir Basil is now hopeful of leading Cunard to "a new and profitable future in a new market situation." Since becoming Cunard's chairman in late 1965, the former BOAC chief has completely reorganized steamship operations, linked up with British European Airways on a new winter-holiday scheme. Vacationers fly via BEA to Gibraltar, then board a Cunard ship for a leisurely Mediterranean cruise. Cunard does not plan to abandon its summer North Atlantic express service. Due to make its maiden voyage in 1969 is a new $80 million, 58,000-ton, one-class liner, now known...