An exhibition in 2018 at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum explored how the world’s greatest ocean liners, and the journeys they made, have helped shape the modern world.
From the middle of the 19th Century until the end of the 20th, ocean liners were emblems of human progress and modernity. Their design was sumptuous, their engineering was ground-breaking, and they forever romanticised our ideas of travel and leisure. At the height of their popularity they became floating symbols of the nations that launched them.