page_title: Orient Steam Navigation Company
section_title: Second World War and after
hierarchical_section_title: Orient Steam Navigation Company / History / Second World War and after
caption_attribution_description: The vessel 'Orcades' docked at No.13 passenger terminal, Pyrmont Dated: No date Digital ID: 9856_a017_A017000073 Rights: www.records.nsw.gov.au/about-us/rights-and-permissions We'd love to hear from you if you use our photos. Many other photos in our collection are available to view and browse on our website using Photo Investigator.
context_page_description: The Orient Steam Navigation Company, also known as the Orient Line, was a British shipping company with roots going back to the late 18th century. From the early 20th century onwards an association began with P&O which became 51% shareholder in 1919 and culminated in the Orient Line being totally absorbed into that company in 1966.
context_section_description: The Second World War again saw the requisitioning of Orient Line ships, with all eight seeing service. Unfortunately four were lost, with the other four returning to the England-Australia mail service in 1947. It took a number of years for the company's fleet to be returned to full strength due to the slow industrial recovery after the war. Three new ships of 28,000–29,000 tons entered service: Orcades (1948), Oronsay (1951) and Orsova (1954), matching in speed and size the three new postwar ships for P&O (Himalaya (1949), Arcadia (1954) and Iberia (1954)). All had higher speeds that allowed them to reduce the sailing time from England to Australia by eight days to 28 days and operated a coordinated service from Tilbury. However, the 1950s also saw air travel beginning to reduce shipping companies' passenger trade. Ships were increasingly switched to cruising for part of the year, and the Oronsay began a trans-Pacific service in 1954.
  Despite this downturn in ocean liner traffic, both P&O and Orient Line ordered new, larger vessels – Canberra for the former, Oriana for the latter. These were the largest and fastest ever ships for the England – Australia route, reducing the voyage time from 28 days to 21 days with their service speed of 27.5 knots (50.9 km/h). Although slightly smaller than Canberra, Oriana was the faster of the two and after the final takeover of Orient Line in 1966, Oriana took the P&O Golden Cockerel for fastest ship in the fleet from Canberra. However, the two ships' career as passenger liners was short-lived, being switched to full-time cruising from 1974 onwards.
caption: SS Orcades in Pyrmont, New South Wales
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