RMS Britannia was an oceanliner of the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, later known as Cunard Steamship Company. She was launched on Wednesday 5 February 1840, at the yard of Robert Duncan & Company in Greenock, Scotland. The ship and her Britannia-class sisters, Acadia, Caledonia, and Columbia, were the first ocean liners built by the company.
On her maiden voyage, starting on 4 July 1840, she made Halifax, Nova Scotia, from Liverpool, England, in 12 days and 10 hours, continuing on to Boston, Massachusetts. The Britannia transported numerous types of cargo alongside its passengers. There were 115 passengers, with 82 crew members on board.
Her first homeward run from Halifax to Liverpool was made in just under 10 days at an average speed of about 11 knots (20 km/h), setting a new eastbound record which lasted until 1842.

In January 1842 Charles Dickens and his wife travelled to the United States on Britannia. The weather was bad, he was seasick for most of the voyage and returned home on a sailing ship.

But her story does not end here…





Technical Data


Land: England
Company: British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company/Cunard Line
Year of launch: 5 February 1840
Commissioned: 4 July 1840
Fate: Sold to the Reichsflotte in March 1849
   Sunk as target ship in July 1880
Length: Hull: 73,5m (241,1ft)
Beam: Hull: 12,5m (41ft) Paddlebox: 16,5m (54,1ft)
Draught: 5,1m (16,8ft)
Boiler: 4x coal-fired boilers
Coal bunker: 376t
Coal consuption: 38t/day
Engines: two-cyl-side-lever-engine
Speed: 8.5kn (15,7km/h 9,7mph)
Capacity: 115 Pax.
Crew:  82







Build by: Schatten1936

Renders by: X





RMS Britannia (1840) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.