shipping in britain

In England no town is more than 170 kilometres from the sea. So it's no surprise that Britain has a very important history of ships and the sea.
The British Navy was the biggest navy in the world at one time. Now it's smaller, but many other ships are still used for importing and exporting goods and for taking people on business or holiday.
In Liverpool there is a great museum of maritime history. It's got several ships in the docks outside. In side it shows what it was like to be on some of the ships.

Between 1830 and 1930 more than nine million people from all over Europe left from the port of Liverpool to start a new life in America or Australia.
In the early twentieth century there were large numbers of very elegant passenger ships.
They crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool or Southampton to New York in five or six days.
The most famous ship was probably the Titanic. It sank in 1912 and over 1,500 people drowned. It was the worst disaster in maritime history. You probably know about if from one of the most expensive films ever made -Titanic!

One of the most famous shipping companies is Cunard. It's got the world's biggest cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2, which crosses the Atlantic from Southampton to New York.
The majority of people do travel around the world by plane but ships are still very important for moving goods.
These metal boxes, or cantainers, are packed with clothes, television sets, computers, furniture and toys.
The Southampton Container Terminal the unload more than one and a half milion containers each year.
So the sea still plays a very important part in life in Britain.