Scale: 1:768. The model depicts a fictional scene of the paddle steamer ‘Britannia’ (1840) passing in the opposite direction to the ‘Queen Mary’ (1934). Fanciful it may be but the model graphically shows the comparative sizes of these two iconic Cunarders, perhaps the most important vessels in the company’s long history. Despite the diminutive scale used, the ‘Queen Mary’ is a ‘Goliath’ compared with the ‘David’ of her famous ancestor. The plaque attached to the case of the model calls the scene ‘The past and the present’.

Cunard began its transatlantic service on 4 July 1840. The ‘Britannia’ and her three sisters that followed her into service were wooden paddle steamers 207 feet in length. The side-lever engines took up over 70 feet of the length of the ships, and were all built by R. Napier and Company on the Clyde. At a speed of 8 1/2 knots, they consumed around 38 tons of coal per day. With their regular and reliable service, they soon began to capture the trade hitherto carried by sailing ships.

Charles Dickens and his wife travelled in the ‘Britannia’ from Liverpool to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 3 January 1842, and kept a diary of the voyage. Smoking was not permitted below decks, because fire was a constant hazard on ships at this time. Poultry was kept in coops on deck and a special deck house with padded sides was provided for the ship’s cow, whose milk was reserved for the use of women, children and invalids.

‘Britannia’ was built by Robert Duncan on the Clyde and served the Company well for nine years before being sold to North German Federation for conversion to a warship and renamed ‘Barbarossa’. Later her engines were removed and she survived as a hulk for many years. Her fate is not known.

In complete contrast, the ‘Queen Mary’ was completed in March 1936. A monster of a ship, her single reduction steam turbines driving four propellers gave her a service speed of 29 knots. Her 776 cabin-class, 784 tourist-class, and 579 third-class passengers were cosseted in standards of accommodation never before seen in a Cunard liner. In August of that year she made the Atlantic crossing in record time, snatching the coveted Blue Riband trophy from the French Line’s ‘Normandie’. After that ‘Queen Mary’ went from strength to strength. Her first year of service saw her carry 56,895 passengers. In August 1938 she set new speed records for both east- and west-bound Atlantic crossings. Her war service as a troopship was tireless so that by the end of hostilities she had travelled over 600,000 miles and carried nearly 800,000 people and set the record for the most number of passengers carried on a ship – 16,683 – a record that has never been broken.

Following much-needed mechanical attention and a refurbishment, ‘Queen Mary’ resumed service on 31 July 1947, but from then her future was uncertain. Industrial problems affected the service later that year, air travel was on the rise, she ran aground in Cherbourg and, in 1952, the new liner ‘United States’ robbed her of the Blue Riband trophy. By 1960 there was speculation about her future and, when a seamen’s strike in 1966 cost Cunard £4 million, the company decided that she was too expensive to operate. ‘Queen Mary’ made her last transatlantic crossing on 16 September 1967 and, after a period of uncertainty about what to do with her, she was sold to the US city of Long Beach, CA, for £1,230,000. She remains there to this day.