For many, 8 May 1967 is remembered as the day jet aviation finally defeated ocean liners as a mainstream form of intercontinental transportation. It was the day Cunard Line announced that Queen Mary would be withdrawn from service later that year and that Queen Elizabeth (1940) would be withdrawn in Autumn 1968.
A quaint scene on New York’s West Side. (Click to enlarge)
Soon, it would possible to count the number of remaining transatlantic superliners on one hand: France (1962), Michelangelo, Raffaello and United States. Ocean liners would continue to carry passengers, but no longer would they serve as the primary form of long distance international transportation.
Meanwhile, at John Brown and Co. in Clydebank, construction was proceeding on a new Cunard flagship that would soon enter a rapidly dwindling and economically uncertain transatlantic passenger market.
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