1801.jan

FRANCONIA (20,158gt) was the third of five intermediate ships which Cunard
ordered to replace First World War losses. She was laid down by John Brown
and Co. Ltd. at Clydebank in August 1919, but work was suspended because of
high building costs, and she was not launched until October 1922. The delay –
she did not enter service until May 1923 – allowed her accommodation to be
modified, and she became the first ship built as a dual-purpose transatlantic liner
and world-wide cruise vessel. Although her maiden (and many later) voyages
began in Liverpool and ended in New York, she spent much of the 1920s and
early 1930s either cruising out of New York or on charter to Furness for New York
to Bermuda sailings. More prosaically, the later 1930s were occupied largely with
liner voyages from Liverpool, Southampton or London to New York.
Wartime service as a troop ship and later as Churchill’s headquarters ship at
the Yalta Conference required a lengthy refit by her builders. She re-entered
service in June 1949 with a Liverpool to Quebec sailing, remaining on the North
Atlantic for the remainder of her career. With new intermediate ships arriving in
the 1950s, she was sold for scrap and arrived at Inverkeithing for demolition by
T.W. Ward Ltd. on 18.12.1956
Ironically, the most anachronistic of the vessels seen here from 1923, the wooden
sailing barge LADY DAPHNE (117gt), is the only one to have survived to the
present day, albeit as a promotional and charter vessel.
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