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All text and photographs (unless stated otherwise) ©  Paul Timmerman

A first attempt to organise a cruise dates back from 1835 when the chief editor of the Shetland Journal wrote an article “To Tourists” in which he proposed to organise cruises to Iceland, the Faroer Islands in summer and to Spain in winter.  

Some years later in 1845 in the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung the following advertisement appeared: “An Opportunity For Taking Part in a Voyage Around the World¨. Meanwhile, a Mr. Sloman, ship owner in Hamburg had plans to use one of his sailing vessels for a world cruise.

However, it was not before 1867 that the paddle wheeler Quaker City (1800 tons) undertook what is regarded to be the first cruise from New York to Europe and the Holy Land. One of  the passengers on board was Mark Twain, whose book (1869, The Innocents Abroad) provides us with a detailed account of the voyage.

Thomas Cooke (whose travel agency still exists today!) organised his first cruise in 1875 to the North Cape with the steamer President Christie which departed with 21 passengers onboard for this trip.

Then, in 1881 the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigating Company, P&O in short, converted their liner Ceylon to a  cruise ship, a daring experiment in those days. Ceylon is regarded as the first cruise ship in history, and consequently, P&O consider themselves the inventors of cruising . Up till now, ship owners had used liners for off season cruising when passenger loads in liner service were low. Full time cruise ships did not exist before Ceylon.

Two other remarkable cruise ships ships in this early period of cruising history were the St. Rognvald and St. Sunniva of the North Company, who had decided to try their luck organising short cruises from Leith or Aberdeen to the Orkney and Shetland Islands and later to Norway. In 1886 their St. Rognvald sailed with 90 passengers to Norway. St. Rognvald was a small ship of 984-tons and 73 m long. It proved to be a success and soon more short cruises were scheduled. North Line immediately started planning a new vessel, resembling a yacht which would be named St. Sunniva. The vessel had to be ready for the 1876 season. St. Rognvald originally had been a liner with cargo spaces that had been forced into cruising whilst St. Sunniva would be a pure passenger carrying cruise vessel. North Line would be successful with these ships until the end of the 19^th century.  

                                                                                Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1903

There are some more examples of early cruising:

-         in the 1880’s and 90’s several British and Norwegian owners offered short trips to the Norwegian fjords (among these being two of the companies that today form the famous Norwegian coastal express service Hurtigruten),

-         the Ohio (American Steam Ship Cy) and theTyburnia, (Pleasure Cruising Yacht Cy) both cruised to the West Indies during the 1880s,

-         Orient Line’s Chimbarazo and Garonne were taken from their London – Australia route and switched to cruising in 1889, sailing to European ports and the West Indies,

-          in 1895 Lusitania and La Touraine, owned by Orient Line and French Line respectively, undertook cruises to sunny destinations such as the Canary Islands, the Azores and the Mediterranean.

-     in 1899 the American Line was feeling the slump in North Atlantic passengers. They decided to sends the ss Paris (former USS Yale) on a West Indies cruise to visit the battle sites of the Spanish American War. The voyage took three weeks and turned out to be a great succes. In later years, the  company sent more of her ships cruising during the off season of the Atlantic trade.

Around the turn of the century several interesting events took the development of cruising a step further.

       P&O' s Vectis 1904

P&O converted their Rome (built 1881) to a  cruise ship, renaming her Vectis. A ship of 5.545 tons, she started sailing in her new role in 1904, cruising to Norway. She carried a mere 150 passengers in luxury surroundings.                                     

The Germans were not to be outdone however and North German Lloyd ‘s Kaiser Wilhelm II made a three week cruise from Bremerhaven to Norway in 1890, carrying 215 passengers. The cruise was a huge success.                                                                                                            

January 22^nd the next year, rival company HAPAG used their 7.661 ton Auguste Victoria for a 58-day round trip to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Auguste Victoria did very well and HAPAG-Lloyd’s famous director Albert Ballin decided HAPAG had to have a full time purpose built cruise ship. Ballin told the German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm of his plans. The Kaiser, having a keen interest in shipping and an admirer of Ballin’s work, sent Ballin his comments and suggestions. Of course the Kaiser’s yacht Hohenzollern served as an example in this matter.

                                               The imperial German yacht Hohenzollern

 Ballin used several of the Kaiser’s suggestions during the design phase of the new vessel. Prinzesse Victoria Louise was completed in 1900 and instantly became a stunning success. Alas, her career was all too short as she ran aground near Jamaica and became a total loss in 1906.

Fortunately. HAPAG had a replacement for her, the Meteor, a cruise yacht of slightly smaller dimensions (3.600 tons and 220 passengers)  built in 1904. She would sail for HAPAG until 1921 before being sold to the Norwegians.

In 1911 HAPAG’s rival, North German Lloyd sent their Grosser Kurfurst on a cruise to Norway and  Spitsbergen. North German Lloyd organised cruises to all parts of the world before WWI, even world-cruises.  

     Prinzessin Victoria Louise,  1900

In spite of a modest growth in the number of vessels sailing in cruise service, cruising in these days obviously remained second to line-voyages.

However, after the turn of the century, liners returning from New York and Canada to Europe were often half empty. So, gradually, these return trips were marketed as pleasure cruises although in fact they were pure line voyages. On board standards were improved, and liners were built with the emphasis on luxury rather than speed. All kinds of novelties were introduced: White Star Line's Adriatic of 1907 introduced the first swimming pool on the high seas, while HAPAG Lloyd's Amerika featured the first a la carte restaurant, the Ritz Carlton restaurant and the first electric passenger lifts on board a passenger vessel.

So, apart from a few full time cruise ships and occaisional liner voyages marketed as cruises, the cruise industry was still in its infancy.

In 1914, the start of World War I, all efforts to get cruising of the ground came to an abrupt halt.  

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