P&O’s history has been captured in pictures and bound together in a book named ‘A Photographic History of P&O Cruises’.
Officially launched today by Carnival Australia CEO Ann Sherry onboard P&O Cruises’ Pacific Pearl in Sydney, the book is unique among those produced about P&O because of the rarely seen imagery it contains.
Written by Australian historians Rob Henderson, Doug Cremer, Rachelle Cross and Chris Frame, ‘A Photographic History of P&O Cruises’ focuses on how Australia and pleasure cruising helped shape P&O to become one of the most significant and famous shipping lines in history.
With a narrative sourced from the only known surviving copy of the P&O board minutes dating back to the 1830s, the book includes imagery from the Orient Heritage collection owned by Henderson and Cremer.
“I was working for P&O in Sydney when the photographic archive became too large for the company to store.”
Rob Henderson, P&O Cruises Archivist
“When a decision was made to dispose of the collection, I was able to negotiate to save some of the archive and have spent the past 46 years documenting it,” he said.
“It contains many thousands of images, the best of which we’ve selected for publication in this book.”
Fellow author, Chris Frame, said he met Rob while onboard Queen Mary 2 after he’d finished a lecture about Cunard’s history.
[L-R]: Doug Cremer, Ann Sherry & Rob Henderson at the book launch.
They started talking about P&O and Chris says by the end of the cruise they had agreed to collaborate on the project.
Speaking at the launch, Ms Sherry said that over a period of more than 150 years, P&O had been at the forefront of nation building in Australia, a role which was continuing in its leadership of the resurgence of cruising.
“We owe a debt of gratitude to Rob Henderson, Doug Cremer, Chris Frame and Rachelle Cross for documenting the P&O story as a pictorial record in this magnificent book.”
Ann Sherry, Carnival Australia CEO