Page 667 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

The naming ceremony for the Queen Anne liner saw the traditional
smashing of a bottle of Champagne against the ship and included

a performance by legendary Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. An evening of

entertainment, which featured Craig Charles DJing alongside the Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, concluded with a firework display as the

Queen Anne continued her tour around the British Isles.

The event was hosted on the banks of the Mersey because Cunard and its

transatlantic passenger shipping service were launched in Liverpool in 1840.

The company's ships have previously attracted more than a million spectators
to the region, first for the maiden call of the QE2 in July 1990, and in 2015 for

the Three Queens ‘royal rendezvous’ in front of the Cunard Building, which

celebrated the 175th anniversary of the cruise line.

Liverpool's association with Cunard is felt keenly. The Cunard Building - the
centre point of the city's Three Graces - was constructed as headquarters for

the company, but it left the city in the 1960s and moved its British operations

to Southampton.

Here, we look at the company's history in Liverpool.

The beginning

Canadian timber merchant Sir Samuel Cunard won the British government

contract to deliver mail across the Atlantic in 1839. He established his

headquarters in Liverpool, to run a fleet of steamships to journey across the
Atlantic.

The following year, Cunard's first steamship the Britannia sailed from
Liverpool to Halifax, Canada and then to Boston in the United States. There

were around 60 passengers on board and it saw the birth of regular