The Cruise Ship was a British idea, first proposed in the late 1830s and the first cruise ships were British too. From the 1840s, P&O encouraged passengers to take holidays on its line voyages, even getting William Makepeace Thackeray to extol the virtues of the Mediterranean sea route to Egypt. In The Cruise Ship: A Very British Institution Nick Robins looks at the 160 year history of the British cruise ship and explains how the industry grew from its very small beginnings to become of the most popular holiday type for Britons, with over 1.1 million of us taking a cruise holiday per year.