Source: Australian National Maritime Museum.
As maritime technology improved, mostly through better ship design and navigation, long-distance maritime journeys were substantially reduced. For instance, the initial journeys between Great Britain and Australia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries took 70 to 110 days. The use of clipper ships in the latter part of the 19th century saw a decline to between 50 and 70 days. Steam engines and the Suez shortcut in the late 19th and early 20th centuries reduced the journey to about 40 days. In the 1950s, the last liners could do so in about 25 days. From the 1960s onward, air transportation would assert its dominance, and liner services were phased out.