Spanning the Atlantic kk Ex-May Company Lending Library w/ stamps &tc kk

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931. Hardcover. In quite good condition.. Octavo, [23cm/9.25inches], full gilt-embossed Shannon green-coloured cloth sans dust jacket, pp. 227, indexed. Illustrated with b-w halftones &tc.. Please feel free to inquire as to particulars and/or additional photographs. ... Cunard was formed in 1840 by Samuel Cunard after he decided to start a company that would carry mail from England to the United States. England paid for the costs of this service, since the country wanted a more regular service than the sailing ships of the time could do. Cunard started with four steam ships that made crossings of the Atlantic Ocean once a week. The company became known for its record of good safety–while ships of other companies often sank, killing many people, these sorts of things rarely happened to Cunard. By the early 1900s, though, Cunard was faced with many other ships from several countries also competing with it for passengers going across the Atlantic. This caused the company to build three new ships, larger and faster than the ones before them. They were named RMS Mauretania, RMS Lusitania and RMS Aquitania. Theses ships made Cunard back into a leading shipping line, even though Lusitania was sunk during World War I by a German submarine, killing 1,200 people. In 1934, another big Cunard ship, the RMS Queen Mary, began service. She was the largest ship ever built at that time. During World War II, Queen Mary and another new ship like her, Queen Elizabeth, carried many soldiers to support England and the US.