PADDLE STEAMER BRITANNIA
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The first regular scheduled passenger service across the Atlantic was on board the Clyde-built paddle steamer, Britannia.
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It was the first of four vessels built by Robert Napier, the father of Clyde shipbuilding, which made such crossings.
Britannia was the first vessel ever commissioned for the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, the precursor of the world-famous Cunard Line.
Launched in 1840, weighing just over 1150 tonnes and measuring nearly 230 ft long, she made her maiden voyage from Liverpool on July 4th.
Averaging 8.5 knots, she arrived in Halifax and went on to Boston, completing the trip in 14 days.
Canadian Samuel Cunard had won the contract for the weekly service because he undertook to sail throughout the winter.
Britannia was by no means a luxury vessel. In 1842, one of her most famous passengers, Charles Dickens, found the voyage so disgusting and uncomfortable that he refused to return on her.
Nevertheless, Britannia, like all Cunard's vessels, was reliable, unlike others that sacrificed safety for speed with, occasionally, loss of life. No lives were lost aboard any Cunard ship until 1915 when the Lusitania was torpedoed by Germany off the Irish coast.
Britannia made 40 return trips across the Atlantic before being sold.
Renamed Barbarosa, her engines were removed and she became a Prussian Navy sailing ship before being deliberately sunk as a target ship in 1880 - an inglorious fate for a once-proud vessel.
