section_path: Humans and the sea/Travel
section_name: Travel
paragraph_text: Travel
  
  Sailing ships or packets carried mail overseas, one of the earliest being the Dutch service to Batavia in the 1670s. These added passenger accommodation, but in cramped conditions. Later, scheduled services were offered but the time journeys took depended much on the weather. When steamships replaced sailing vessels, ocean-going liners took over the task of carrying people. By the beginning of the twentieth century, crossing the Atlantic took about five days and shipping companies competed to own the largest and fastest vessels. The Blue Riband was an unofficial accolade given to the fastest liner crossing the Atlantic in regular service. The Mauretania held the title with 26.06 knots (48.26 km/h) for twenty years from 1909. The Hales Trophy, another award for the fastest commercial crossing of the Atlantic, was won by the United States in 1952 for a crossing that took three days, ten hours and forty minutes.
  
  The great liners were comfortable but expensive in fuel and staff. The age of the trans-Atlantic liners waned as cheap intercontinental flights became available. In 1958, a regular scheduled air service between New York and Paris taking seven hours doomed the Atlantic ferry service to oblivion. One by one the vessels were laid up, some were scrapped, others became cruise ships for the leisure industry and still others floating hotels.