The Peninsula and Oriental Navigation Company, otherwise known as P&O, has been sailing around the world for more than 160 years.

The company we now know as P&O Cruises began in 1815 when the company (then known as Wilcox and Anderson, after its two founders) started a cargo service between England and the Iberian Peninsula. Twenty years later Wilcox and Anderson began to take passengers on their cargo vessels. From these simple beginnings a new form of travel was born, for which much of the credit must go to Arthur Anderson who had the breadth of vision to foresee a day when people would sail on ships as a leisure activity.

In 1840 the company won an important contract that enabled them to expand their routes to include the port of Alexandria in Egypt. A new high speed vessel was built for this longer route, a paddle steamer which the company named the S.S .Oriental , and at the same time the line was renamed ‘The Peninsula and Oriental.

Inspired by the growing interest in sea travel to exciting destinations, P&O placed an advert in 1843 in the Times of London for a round trip cruise to Constantinople on the paddle ship Tagus . This is arguably the first recorded advertisement for cruise holidays . One of the early passengers was William Makepeace Thackeray who sailed as a guest of P&O and wrote about his experiences in a book; probably the first example of celebrity endorsement.

In 1904 P&O re-fitted one of their Australian mail ships, the Roma , re-named it the Vectis and began cruising to the Norwegian Fjords.

By the early thirties P&O were pioneering cruise holidays to Australia with the 23,000 ton Strathaird conveying 1,100 passengers to Brisbane. Now P&O are the antipodes' leading cruise line with cruises to the South pacific and Asia from Australian and New Zealand ports.

During the thirties cruising became increasingly popular, with new liners such as the Canberra , the Oriana , and the Arcadia sailing more and more routes, but this was brought to an abrupt halt by the Second World War. The cruise liners were pressed into service as troop carriers, and history was to repeat itself in 1982 when P&O's Canberra transported troops down to the South Atlantic at the start of the Falklands War. The ship received a rapturous reception when she sailed back to her homeport of Southampton, her decks lined with service personnel.

After World War II P&O Cruises transported over one million British passengers (known as the Ten Pound Poms) to a new life in Australia, as part of a government scheme to populate the country. The voyage took four weeks and for most of the passengers it was their first time at sea. Sixty years later those early pioneers still remember the P&O ships with affection.

After a century and a half P&O cruises are still providing the sterling service that began with the S.S. Oriental and is now being provided on cruise deals with modern super liners that sail the world under the P&O flag.