Bill Miller’s Picture Encyclopedia Revisits Ships of Golden ’50s
“It was 10 years since the end of World War II and the chaos,” said author, maritime historian and lecturer William H. Miller. “Business was back stronger, a new generation of ships were being built. Everything was booming back then, the golden 1950s!”
And Miller’s new book, Picture Encyclopedia of Passenger Ships 1955, takes us back to that era of great optimism, when passenger ships were still a primary means of long-distance travel between cities and continents.
“New York City was booming. The harbor was booming.”
Yet the decade was fast approaching a disruption that would change the world of transportation irrevocably.
Where the Fascination Began
Miller has spent a lifetime documenting passenger ships and ocean travel through books, lecturing, and decades of research.
“I don’t remember when it wasn’t my top fascination, hobby, or pastime,” Miller said. “It never just started and grew and expanded — it was there from day one.”
He recalls that in March 1957, his father took him to Hoboken’s Fifth Street Pier. Miller brought a new AGFA camera his aunt had given him.
“We went down to the Holland America Line pier, and I took my first photograph, which amazingly, I still have,” Miller said.
The harbor he remembers was crowded with passenger ships and freighters.
“There weren’t enough piers in Manhattan Island,” Miller said. Companies, including American Export Lines, Holland America Line, and American President Lines, sometimes could not get a pier in Manhattan.
“So they went across the river to Hoboken, Jersey City or Brooklyn. Less convenient, but they had no choice.”
The Book That Never Left Him
A few years after taking that first photograph, Miller found another way to explore the passenger-ship world.
In 1961, he bought Laurence Dunn’s Passenger Liners, a 474-page illustrated directory cataloging passenger ships from around the world.
“This was the most fabulous book,” Miller said. “Cost me $20. I had to save my Christmas and my birthday money. Because that was a whopping amount of money for a book back in those days. I even had to ask my mother to give me the 30 cents to ride the PATH, where it was 15 cents each way because I was counting down to pennies.”
He was also fascinated by how Dunn could have assembled such a reference work.
“I don’t know how in those pre-computer days, the kind of file system Mr. Dunn must have had,” Miller said. “It must have been staggering to get pictures of these remote Indonesian or Malaysian ships. You had to wait for sea mail, not even air mail, to get the owners to send you a photo.”
That book, along with the maritime books Miller collected, helped inspire his new encyclopedia.
“I have all of my books from when I was a kid,” Miller said. “And many of the great maritime authors, who are all dead now, used to do these wonderful compendiums.”
“I said, I’m going to bring them back to life.”
Bringing the Passenger Ships Back
“I proposed the idea of three books for every 10 years, and the publisher said, that’s a great idea. Let’s do it,” Miller said.
He also had to define the world the book would cover.
“We are talking about passenger ships. We are not talking about cruise ships,” Miller said. “The ships I’m generally talking about are the ships that carried people from A to B, transport.”
“Yes, there were a few cruise ships around, but it was a small percentage in the overall complexion of the passenger ship business. People were still using passenger ships to go,” he continued, describing what he called “line voyages” between places such as Southampton and New York or Naples and Buenos Aires.
Researching the encyclopedia also brought Miller back to details he had not thought about recently.
“I, of course, am very fortunate to live in the modern age that I don’t have to write to Kuala Lumpur to get a picture of some long-ago steamer sailing out of Penang,” Miller said.
“And I rediscovered things about some of the more remote ships, because I went and checked a few other sources. I found things like what the fares were, how long it took to get between certain ports. Mostly, it was a grand reminder of the many diverse sailing routes that existed. You could go almost anywhere by ship.”
That world would begin changing rapidly just a few years later.
“The first jet service NY-London was in Oct .1958,” Miller said. “Cunard responded that ‘flying is a mere fad — it will pass!’”
“But in six months, the airlines had two-thirds of all transatlantic passengers; and 98 percent in five years.”
More Books Ahead
Miller has several more projects underway.
On All the Seven Seas: Travel Aboard Passenger Ships is another of Miller’s recent books, continuing his writing about passenger ships and his own years traveling aboard them.
Another forthcoming project turns even further back.
“I have a book coming up,” Miller said. “It’s called Liners Between the Wars, and this is the liners of the 1920s and 30s.”
He is also working on the continuation of the encyclopedia series.
When asked about those future books, Miller said, “We’re going to gradually see the transition in 65 of some new faces. For example, Norwegian Cruise Lines will appear, then called Norwegian Caribbean Lines.”
By 1975, he said, “you’re going to see the big names, the Royal Caribbeans, the Carnivals.”
With more books still ahead, Miller said his joy remains in sharing his lifelong passion.
“It’s rewarding because you are sharing something that you love,” he said. “And that’s very important to be able to do, and very fortunate.”
William H. Miller’s new Picture Encyclopedia of Passenger Ships 1955 is now available to pre-order from retailers like Amazon.
And for more from Miller, please follow his Heard Along the Promenade Deck column, with new dispatches published every Sunday morning.
