Please Note

Please Note: The house flag and word mark 'P&O' are Trade Marks of the DP World Company https://www.dpworld.com/

This iconic poster was part of a campaign created in 1958 by David Ogilvy for the Orient Line - and later revived to advertise P&O-Orient Lines and P&O Worldwide services.

The young lad was four-year-old Anthony Ashbolt of Sydney and Orient Line Officer, Roy Cookman, photographed by Tom Hollyman on board Oronsay.

Copies are available from P&O Heritage ~ http://www.poheritage.com

In the beginning.....

"TAGUS. INTERESTING and CLASSIC EXCURSION"

"Steam to Constantinople,calling at Gibraltar,Malta,Athens,Syria,Smyrna,Mytilene and the Dardanelles.

So ran P&O's first advertisement, on 14th March 1843, in The Times of London, "for a round voyage aboard the 782 ton paddle steamship Tagus."

From that singular advertisement, P&O continued to develop popular, classic voyages.

In 1844, the acclaimed novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, cruised the Mediterranean, as a guest of P&O.

A press advertisement from 1893

In 1900, watercolour sketches by William Lionel Wylie, a guest of the P&O directors, were used as artwork for early P&O posters

In the opening decade of the 20th Century, P&O had more than 1,000 ships in its various companies.

It eventually became the largest shipping company in the world.

P&O invented cruising

The ss Egypt was converted to a well appointed 'Cruising Yacht'.......

A 1913 advertisement

An early 1914 P&O Head Office Poster

Cruising stopped - but not even a World War could prevent the ships from sailing....

Eighty-five of the company's ships were sunk in the First World War

With the 1918 Armistice, there came an upturn in cruising......

With many fine new ships....

The inter-war years saw a growing demand for cruises....

Suddenly, 'Electric Ships' were all the rage.....

Bright young things flocked to be seen aboard a P&O.....

Cruising was for all -Tourist Class fares from £1 a day!

Exotic ports of call were added to the ship's itineraries.....

The more funnels the better.....

Then Adolf Hitler came along and spoiled it all......

It was war with Germany, again......

Cruising was brought to a sudden halt in 1939, with the outbreak of World War Two....

The necessity of transporting enormous numbers of troops and personnel around the world required that all British registered passenger and cargo ships be put into the British Government's transport service and the great mail steamers providing cruises from Australia were requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war service.

Armed Merchant Cruisers, Troopships and Transports were rapidly restored to their pre-war glory.

The elegant ss Canton - from Armed Merchant Cruiser to Far East Service passenger liner.

179 of the Company's ships were sunk during the Second World War.

After 1945, the passenger market to India declined as India gained its long overdue independence........

While P&O's Far East services grew apace.....

When P&O sailings to Australia boomed with the advent of paid-passages for European immigrants. P&O built 15 large passenger liners, including Himalaya, Chusan, Arcadia, and Iberia, culminating in Oriana and Canberra, which were of a hitherto unprecedented speed and size.

Cruising from Australia resumed in 1953.

The rigid pre-war mail contracts that required weekly sailings to Australia were gradually replaced by aircraft in the 1950s, and as mail voyages became fewer, ships were transferred to the cruising schedule. For Australia the next major development in cruising came between March and October 1968, when the Himalaya was based in Sydney, undertaking eight consecutive cruises to the South Seas.