Look how far we've come

THE passage took 78 days from Southampton and the arrival in 1852 of the Chusan, the first mail steamship from Britain, was celebrated in Sydney with a gala ball and a waltz composed for the captain.

The 175th anniversary of the foundation of the vessel's owners will be celebrated next month with an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum.

What was the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company was later renamed P&O and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then, the great shipping line has sailed through war and peace, the rise and decline of the British Empire and the challenge of air travel.

The two World Wars shifted the focus of many shipping lines including P&O.

Its ships were requisitioned by the British government as troop transports and hospital ships and, during World War II, P&O lost nearly half its fleet.

After the war P&O won a lucrative contract to carry assisted British migrants to Australia. Migrants paid £10 for passage and so became known as ''Ten Pound Poms''.

With the growth of air travel and decline in passenger shipping from the 1950s, P&O vessels gradually transferred to a cruising schedule.

Happily for P&O, cruising is enjoying a boom - the number of Australians taking a cruise holiday last year surged a record 34 per cent to an unprecedented 623,294.

The report compiled by the International Cruise Council Australasia showed the growth in Australian cruise passenger numbers last year outstripped all other major international markets.