page_title: Royal Mail Ship
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Mail Ship
caption_attribution_description: English: Cloisonné crest of the Cunard liner RMS Laconia including the Cunard Line standard surrounded by a blue garter and, as a Royal Mail Ship, a Royal Mail pre-war design "crown" logo, decorating a surviving silver plate "bud" vase from the liner's main dining salon. The day after Britain had declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, the British flagged liner was requisitioned by the Admiralty, converted first into an armed merchant cruiser, and then in 1941 to a troop transport. Three years after entering national service, however, the Laconia was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean on the evening of September 12, 1942, by the German submarine U-256. It went down about 130 miles north-northeast of Ascension Island with the loss of over 1,600 passengers and crew. Most of those lost were Italian POW's being transported to England from the Middle East. (The Cooper Historic Transportation Collection)
context_page_description: Royal Mail Ship, usually seen in its abbreviated form RMS, is the ship prefix used for seagoing vessels that carry mail under contract to the British Royal Mail. The designation dates back to 1840. Any vessel designated as "RMS" has the right to fly both the pennant of the Royal Mail when sailing and to include the Royal Mail "crown" insignia with any identifying device and/or design for the ship.
  It was used by many shipping lines, but is often associated in particular with the White Star Line, Cunard Line, Royal Mail Lines and Union-Castle Line, which held a number of high-profile mail contracts, and traditionally prefixed the names of many of their ships with the initials "RMS".
  While some lines in the past, particularly the Royal Mail Lines, called all their ships "RMS", technically a ship would use the prefix only while contracted to carry mail, and would revert at other times to a standard designation such as "SS".
context_section_description: Royal Mail Ship (sometimes Steam-ship or Steamer), usually seen in its abbreviated form RMS, is the ship prefix used for seagoing vessels that carry mail under contract to the British Royal Mail. The designation dates back to 1840. Any vessel designated as "RMS" has the right to fly both the pennant of the Royal Mail when sailing and to include the Royal Mail "crown" insignia with any identifying device and/or design for the ship.
  It was used by many shipping lines, but is often associated in particular with the White Star Line, Cunard Line, Royal Mail Lines and Union-Castle Line, which held a number of high-profile mail contracts, and traditionally prefixed the names of many of their ships with the initials "RMS".
  While some lines in the past, particularly the Royal Mail Lines, called all their ships "RMS", technically a ship would use the prefix only while contracted to carry mail, and would revert at other times to a standard designation such as "SS".
caption: RMS "Crown" as displayed by the Cunard liner Laconia
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2011:12:21 16:35:17", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7935", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1158"}