Source: Australian National Maritime Museum.
As maritime technology improved, mostly through better ship design and improved navigation, long-distance maritime journeys were reduced substantially. For instance, initial journeys in the late 18th and early 19th centuries between Great Britain and Australia took between 70 and 110 days. The use of clipper ships in the latter part of the 19th century saw a decline 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 were able to do so in about 25 days. In the following years, air transportation would assert its dominance, and liner services were removed.