Maritime History

Canadian Pacific Steamship Company

Canadian Pacific Steamship Company was a large Canadian shipping company established in the 19th century. From the late 1880s until after World War II, the company was Canada's largest operator of Atlantic and Pacific steamships. Many immigrants travelled on Canadian Pacific ships from Europe to Canada. In 1914 the sinking of the Canadian Pacific steamship RMS Empress of Ireland just before World War I became the largest maritime disaster in Canadian history. The company provided Canadian Merchant Navy vessels in World Wars I and II. Twelve vessels were lost due to enemy action in World War II, including the RMS Empress of Britain, which was the largest ship ever sunk by a German U-boat. The company moved to a model of container shipping from passenger, freight and mail service in the 1960s due to competitive pressure from the airline industry. The company was a part of the Canadian Pacific Ltd. conglomerate. It was spun out as a separate company in 2001. In 2005, it was purchased by TUI AG and is now part of the company's Hapag-Lloyd division. The Atlantic and Pacific passenger liners of Canadian Pacific were always British-flagged and largely British-crewed and were not part of the Canadian Merchant Marine, ownership being with the British-registered Canadian Pacific Steamships Ltd. subsidiary.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Kaipara Harbour
• ▸Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
• ▸HMS Acheron (1803)

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.