For well over a century, until 1963, Plymouth served as a port-of-call for the world's leading passenger lines, including P&O, Orient, White Star, Cunard, Elder Dempster, French Line, United States Lines, Norddeutscher Lloyd and HAPAG. Plymouth's favourable location in the English Channel resulted in its designation as the British mail port in some governments' shipping contracts. The resulting passenger and mail facilities instituted at Millbay Docks established Plymouth as convenient port-of-call; between the two world wars the liner calls rarely dropped below 500 annually.

The result was that Plymouth became the last English port for many of the thousands of emigrants who left Europe for the New World and the first for many transatlantic travellers. The two railways serving the town, the Great Western and the London & South Western, vied with each other for the privilege of the mail traffic and for the first class passengers, and considerable rivalry arose, trains racing to be in London first.

This book traces Plymouth's history as an ocean liner port- of-call from the 1840s until the port was officially closed to mail traffic in 1963. A unique collection of photographs depict the liners at Plymouth, the tenders which transferred passengers and mail between the Sound and Millbay, and both the railway facilities at Millbay and Devonport.

ISBN 0 906294 30 4. 120 pages, 190 illustrations. Card covers. 

£12.00