Age of Cunard

by Daniel Allen Butler

In 1840 Samuel Cunard, a Halifax, Nova Scotia businessman, took possession of a quartet of small paddlewhell steamers and formed the which would become known as the Cunard Line, the first -- and ultimately last -- great transatlantic passenger service. "The Age of Cunard" brings the whole amazing tale of Cunards successes in the passenger shipping industry vibrantly alive, from the tiny Britannia of 1840, to the Queen Mary 2. From begginng to end, the years of the great passenger ships were truly the Age of Cunard.

467 pages, Hardcover

First published January 25, 2004

About the author

Daniel Allen Butler is a maritime and military historian, the author (through September 2011) of nine books. Some of his previous works include Unsinkable: the Full Story of RMS Titanic (1998); Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War (2006); The Age of Cunard (2003); The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, theCalifornian, and the Night the Titanic was Lost (2009); The Burden of Guilt: How Germany Shattered the Last Days of Peace, Summer 1914 (2010); and Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm: the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (2011).



Educated at Hope College, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Butler served in the United States Army before becoming a full-time author. He is an internationally recognized authority on maritime subjects and a popular guest speaker, having given presentations at the National Archives in Washington, DC, the Mariners’ Museum, and in the United Kingdom. He has also been frequently included in the on-board enrichment series of Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 andQueen Mary 2, as well as the ships of the Royal Caribbean and Norwegian cruise lines.



Butler is currently at work on three new projects: The Field Marshal, a biography of Erwin Rommel; The Last Field of Glory: Waterloo, 1815, a history of the Hundred Days; and But for Freedom Alone, the story of the Declaration of Arbroath.



A self-proclaimed “semi-professional beach bum,” Butler divides what little time he spends away from his writing between wandering long stretches of warm, sandy beaches, his love of woodworking, his passion for British sports cars, and his fascination with building model ships. After living and working in Los Angeles, California, for several years, Butler has recently relocated—permanently, he hopes!—to Atlantic Beach, Florida, where the beaches are better.

Reviews

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given this book a 3.5 if I could have simply because I didn't understand some of the descriptions and terminology. I took some time to read this book, but enjoyed it. I learned a lot about transatlantic passenger shipping and circumstances of the times that affected it. It certainly was a well researched book.

[Jonathan Franz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the most engaging histories of transatlantic ocean liners I have read. It does lack academic citations, but it excells in telling the story of transatlantic shipping through the lens of the iconic Cunard line.

[Jeffrey Thiessen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Obvious factual errors left me wondering if I could trust the author's account of Cunard's history or was he just sloppy with some of his facts.