Archive Details Early guests of the Holland America Line

Old Holland America Cruise passenger list
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Now a premium cruise brand of Carnival Corporation, Holland America Line’s history dates back 150 years to when the company was first registered in the Netherlands in 1873.

Who were these early cruisers? A newly completed archive project reveals the names of passengers who sailed the line between 1900 and 1969.

The passenger list goes back to the year 1900

Holland America Line’s past comes to life thanks to a series of passenger list archives spanning nearly 70 years of operation. Now digitized in a searchable database hosted by CBG | The list contains the name of each guest, the port of departure and the date of departure.

According to the Holland America Blog, “This three-year project could not have been completed without the help of volunteers from Dutch crowdsourcing platform Many Hands. These volunteers scanned approximately 150,000 passenger logs and documents and entered them into the database.”

Photo credit: Holland America Line

The archives can be found on the Rotterdam City Archives website. Most of the passengers have departed from Rotterdam, the database shows, and there are some notable incidents, such as births on board, a stowaway and a dog traveling alone. The earliest passenger list is May 3, 1900 and the latest is December 29, 1969.

In the early and mid-century, Holland America Line guests were in good company. Albert Einstein’s name appears several times, as does Winston Churchill’s.

Line celebrates the earliest voyages

It was the Rotterdam I which set sail for the line in 1872, making its maiden voyage and first transatlantic cruise from Rotterdam to New York before the line was officially registered.

The late 19th century was a busy time for Holland America as it made 1,300 transatlantic crossings with more than 500,000 passengers traveling on the line, many of them immigrants heading to the New World.

Classic Rotterdam
Photo courtesy Holland America Line

This year, Holland America is celebrating its 150th anniversary with special sailings and onboard events. It also Replica of the first voyage of the Rotterdam I in October 2022If RotterdamVIIwhich entered service in 2020, traced the 1872 voyage from the Netherlands to New York.

Part two of the milestone celebration will take place in April 2023 when the 2,668 guests RotterdamVII leaves Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and returns to the city of Rotterdam, again with special events on board marking the 150th anniversary of the line’s official registry. The April cruise calls at New York, Plymouth and London, England before terminating in the Netherlands.

And here’s some trivia: The line’s first so-called pleasure cruise sailed in 1910 aboard the 10,500 gross ton I must say. Cruise ship records show that the ship sailed from New York to the Mediterranean Sea and the Holy Land.

Today’s New Statendam VIlaunched in 2017 is close to 100,000 gross tons and shows how ship capacities have grown over the decades.

Source: News Network


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