SS Arcadia was a passenger liner built for P&O in 1953 to service the UK to Australia route. Towards the end of her life she operated as a cruise ship, based in Sydney, until scrapped in 1979.
History
The Arcadia was built for P&O by John Brown & Company at Clydebank in Scotland, at an estimated cost of £5 million; her keel was laid in 1952 and she was launched on 14 May 1953, just a couple of hours after the Orsova of the associated Orient Line went down the ways at Barrow in Furness. Her maiden voyage commenced on 22 February 1954, sailing from Tilbury in the UK to Fremantle in Western Australia via the Suez Canal, Aden, Bombay and Colombo. Arcadia had a virtually identical sister in the Belfast-built SS Iberia.
Following the return trip to Australia, Arcadia made a series of cruises from Southampton before embarking for Australia again in October 1954. This mix of liner and cruise trade was expanded in 1959 when Arcadia made her first cruise voyage from an Australian port, sailing from Sydney on a short cruise in November and then to San Francisco in December.
As the number of passengers travelling by ship to Australia declined due to growth in air travel, P&O was expanding its cruise network. In 1959, Arcadia was refitted (with refurbished cabins and air-conditioning extended to all the accommodation) and throughout the 1960s continued the pattern of line voyages interspersed with cruises from Britain and Australia, including trans-Pacific routes, some of which took her through the