Royal Mail Ship (sometimes
Steam-ship or
Steamer), usually seen in its abbreviated form
RMS, is the
ship prefix used for seagoing vessels that carry
mail under contract by
Royal Mail. Any vessel designated as RMS has the right to both fly the pennant of the Royal Mail when sailing and to include the Royal Mail "crown" logo with any identifying device and/or design for the ship.
The designation has been used since 1840.The first citation in the
Times is from 18 August 1840 It was used by many shipping lines, but is often associated in particular with the
Cunard Line,Maxtone-Graham, John
et al. (2004).
Royal Mail Lines and
Union-Castle Line, which held a number of high-profile mail
contracts, and which traditionally prefixed the names of many of their ships with the initials "RMS". The
Canadian Pacific Railway's trans-Pacific Royal Mail contract required the construction of the first three of a fleet of steamships—the
RMS Empress of China, the
RMS Empress of India, and the
RMS Empress of Britain which regularly sailed between Vancouver and Asia beginning in 1891.
While some lines, particularly the
Royal Mail Lines, called all their ships RMS, technically a......
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