RMS Saxonia was a British passenger liner built by John Brown & Company at Clydebank, Scotland for the Cunard Steamship Company for their Liverpool-Montreal service. She was the first of four almost identical sister ships built by Browns between 1954 and 1957 for UK-Montreal service. The other three were the Ivernia (1955), Carinthia (1956) and Sylvania (1957)
The Saxonia and Ivernia were extensively rebuilt in 1962-63 as dual purpose liner/cruise ships. They were renamed Carmania and Franconia respectively and painted in the same green cruising livery as the older Caronia. Carmania continued transatlantic crossings and cruises until September 1967 when she closed out Cunard's Montreal service. She and Franconia, had been painted white at the end of 1966 and from 1968 Carmania sailed as a full time cruise ship until withdrawal after arriving at Southampton on 31 October 1971. In August 1973 she was bought by the Soviet Union-based Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed SS Leonid Sobinov. The ship was scrapped in 1999.
History
Prior to World War II, Cunard's Canadian services had been maintained by a group of six similar 14,000 GRT liners of the Andania class built between 1922 and 1925. One of these was a war loss and another four were purchased by the Admiralty during the war and converted to naval repair ships.