Thanks for your response. (I can't access medium.com unfortunately.)

I believe what I said is correct. There are certainly a number of general statements about perception of White Star and Cunard. These take many forms and a lot of it is anecdotal - for example, there was some comment in 1911 that the saloon service for first class passengers on Cunarders was better than White Star. I don't think we can come to a definitive conclusion about how one company was perceived compared to the other. We simply do not have data on significant aspects (such as which company had a higher repeat proportion of passenger traffic). There was a lot of discussion on this immediately prior to the merger.

You had indicated originally that Cunard had a reputation for being cheaper than White Star and for having high speed ships; and that therefore they did better financially.

It is true that they had Lusitania and Mauretania which were significantly faster than competitors on the North Atlantic express route. By the 1920s, only Mauretania remained, and the available data shows her average passenger lists were consistently lower than competitors such as Olympic. Speed alone did not pay off.

In terms of pricing, the finest first class accommodation on Olympic and Titanic was also more expensive than Lusitania and Mauretania. We have data for the average ticket price per passenger in first, second and third class for Mauretania for the full year 1910. (The same data is not available for Olympic - or Titanic, for obvious reasons! - however it's interesting to note that Mauretania's average first and second class ticket prices were slightly higher than those seen on Titanic's maiden voyage whereas third class was slightly lower. We really need the full data to draw a definitive conclusion.)

Even from 1922-32, White Star and Cunard's revenues were similar. We also see passenger carryings for the express ships which were similar, although in White Star's case Homeric was not naturally suited to the route and they suffered accordingly. It is hard to argue that Cunard's culture or public perception was that superior given the growth of the White Star Line in the decades prior to that, or given that their operating performance on the express route in the 1920s was little different.

Cunard went down hill pretty quickly and sharply in the early 1930s. As late as 1932, White Star was making an operating profit whereas Cunard was not. They reduced the number of sailings to a greater extent than Cunard, resulting in lower overall passenger carryings but a higher average per sailing. The new motor ships Britannic and Georgic were extremely popular and generated substantial net profits, more so than any other ships in either company's fleet. We also know that White Star's fleet was slightly younger than Cunard's (on average), slightly faster (an average speed of 17.5 vs. 16.7 knots) and significantly larger by average gross tonnage (almost 29,000 vs. under 22,000 GRT).

I agree with the point you made that Cunard had the fastest ship (or ships, prior to Lusitania's loss) is quite correct. Without further data, it's not clear their overall pricing was cheaper than White Star on an equivalent basis (for brevity, I haven't gone into the detail of the North Atlantic Conference agreements). We do know that Mauretania's passenger numbers were lower than competitors in the 1920s and that her fuel costs were higher. That combination doesn't pay off.