Cruise Ship History: Memories of 1929 Crash – Passengers aboard Cunard-White Star’s BERENGARIA went from millionaires to paupers!

Groups of passengers are seen aboard the Berengaria during the fatal 1929 crash.   They lost millions at sea.

The passenger liner Berengaria, originally named Imperator, was built in Germany in 1913 for the Hamburg-Amerika Line. Intended as a rival to Britain’s Olympic, Titanic, Lusitania and Mauretania, she was then the largest ship in the world (919 feet long, weighing 52,117 tons).

Marlene Dietrich aboard the Berengaria in Southampton 1937.

She was handed over to Britain after the First World War, then bought by Cunard as a replacement for Lusitania. Her first voyage for Cunard, still named Imperator, was from Liverpool to New York in February 1920. This was her only voyage from Liverpool, as she later sailed from Southampton.

During the 1920s Berengaria was the flagship of the Cunard fleet, joining Mauretania and Aquitania on the weekly service between Southampton and New York. She made her last Atlantic crossing in 1938.

This builder’s-style model of the ship, scale 1:50, was donated to the Liverpool Maritime Museum by the Cunard Steamship Company.