During its long history P&O and its associated companies have operated every conceivable sort of merchant vessel from coasters and tugs to tankers to giant cruise ships. Yet it is the classic colonial mailship that is best associated with the P&O of yore, that Lifeline of Empire immortalised by Kipling and Somerset Maugham. The P&O mailship, plying what was always the line's premier route from London to Bombay, enjoyed its heyday during the first four decades of the 20th century. Quietly elegant in stone and black livery, with names redolent of their destinations, these ships symbolised the glory days of the Raj.
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