Life at Sea: Daily Life Aboard Historic Steamships & Ocean Liners (1800s-1950s)
Discover what life was like on board the steamship through historical articles richly illustrated with photographs and illustrations. View our ephemera catalog collections to see all of the memorabilia produced on or for each voyage, ship, or steamship line.
Advance Your Research Further Using GG Archives 📖🔍
The GG Archives holds an extensive collection of primary sources related to ocean travel, maritime history, and transatlantic migration.
💡 Students, researchers, and historians can use GG Archives to explore more ship documents, passenger lists, and travel records to gain deeper insights into ocean travel history.
🔗 Explore More at GG Archives! 📜
Ocean Travel Archival Collections Quick Links
- Articles: Exploring Ocean Travel Through the Ages
- Boutique Shops & Ship's Stores
- Ocean Travel Books
- Brochures - Steamships & Ocean Liners
- Correspondence, Shipboard
- Ships and Ocean Liners Collections
- Interesting Fun Facts and Factoids
- Journeys in Steerage
- Ocean Journeys
- Other Ephemera
- Passage Contracts and Tickets
- Passenger Ships Fleet Lists
- Postcards of Steamships & Ocean Liners
- Programs and Concerts
- Provisioning Ocean Liners
- Sanitation at Sea
- Ship Publications
- Shipboard Affairs
- Steamship Captains
- Steamship Crew
- Steamship Lines
- Ship Tonnage and Measurements
- Steamship Port of Calls
- Stowaways Onboard
- RMS Titanic
- Transatlantic Voyages
- Sea Captains
- Ship Crews
- Ship Passenger Lists
- Ship Publications - Newspapers, Newsletters, and Magazines
- Ship Tonnage, Weights, and Measures
- Shipboard Affairs
- Ships and Ocean Liners Archival Collections
- Steamship and Ocean Liner Ports of Call
- Steamship Lines Archival Collection
- Stowaways on Steamships and Ocean Liners
- Transatlantic Voyages
- Travel Guide (1910)
- Vintage Ocean Liner and Travel Brochures
- Vintage Ocean Liner Menus
- Travel Guide (1910)
- Vintage Advertisements
- Vintage Ocean Liner Menus
Articles: Ocean Travel Through the Ages: Stories of Innovation, Adventure, and Social Change
The history of ocean travel offers a rich, multifaceted view of technological innovation, cultural shifts, and human stories. This index of ocean travel articles brings together diverse narratives from 1894 to the mid-20th century, showcasing travel experiences, maritime advancements, and societal trends.
Boutique Shops and Ship Stores
How little shops on board ships plying between European and American ports, became an extremely profitable business well worth the investment to offer their passengers.
Steamships, Ocean Liners, and Ocean Travel Books
The collection spans a wide variety of subjects, from detailed ship histories and personal accounts to auction catalogs and shipbuilding records. Some books focus on specific steamship lines, such as Cunard, White Star, and the Norwegian America Line, while others provide broad overviews of ocean travel from the 19th to the 20th centuries.
Ocean Liner & Travel Brochures: A Century of Transatlantic Voyages (1800s-1950s)
The GG Archives' Ocean Liner and Travel Brochures Collection is an extraordinary historical archive that preserves the golden age of transatlantic travel from the 1800s through the 1950s. These brochures, originally created as promotional materials by major steamship lines, provide a firsthand look at passenger accommodations, ship interiors, services, and the experience of ocean travel across multiple classes—First Class, Second Class, Tourist Third Cabin, and Third Class.
This collection is invaluable for:
✅ 📚 Teachers & Students – Ideal for research on immigration, travel history, and maritime advancements.
✅ 🏡 Genealogists & Family Historians – Provides insight into the journeys of ancestors who crossed the Atlantic.
✅ ⚓ Maritime Historians & Enthusiasts – Captures the evolution of ship design, accommodations, and luxury ocean travel.
✅ 🎨 Collectors & Designers – Offers rare vintage illustrations, typography, and graphic design elements from the early 20th century.
The Ocean Travel Correspondence section of the GG Archives is a treasure trove of first-hand passenger letters, offering unparalleled insight into life aboard transatlantic liners from the late 1800s through the 1920s. These digitized letters capture the personal experiences, emotions, and observations of travelers from diverse backgrounds, making them a valuable resource for historians, educators, genealogists, and students.
Ships and Ocean Liners Archival Collections
Some of the most prized collectibles are ephemeral memorabilia produced on or for each voyage or ship. They include passenger lists, brochures, tickets and voyage contracts, luggage tags, postcards, sports and entertainment programs, and more.
Interesting Fun Facts and Factoids
All the fun and exciting facts and factoids about steamships and ocean liners. Topics covered include night signals, safety, time, ship barbers and barber shops, submarine signaling, aerial mail, classes of ships, guarding gold at sea, and much more.
The Journeys in Steerage Archival Collection is one of the most comprehensive historical resources on immigrant travel by sea, offering a deeply human perspective on one of history’s greatest migrations. This collection captures the harsh realities of steerage travel, including firsthand accounts, rare photographs, inspection cards, passenger lists, and official regulations.
The immigration story of Ludwig and Elise Gampfer is an excellent resource for understanding transatlantic travel, Ellis Island immigration, steerage conditions, and immigrant contributions to American society. By combining personal narratives with historical records, this article brings the ocean travel experience of immigrants to life, making it a valuable and versatile resource for multiple fields of research.
The 1928 White Star Line Embarkation Notice for the SS Laurentic provides a valuable historical artifact for researchers, educators, genealogists, and maritime historians. It offers detailed logistical information about transatlantic voyages from Glasgow to Canada, including passenger procedures, accommodations, passport requirements, and shipboard life. This document serves as an essential primary source for understanding ocean travel in the late 1920s, particularly for those studying immigration, maritime history, and social class distinctions aboard ocean liners.
🚢 Passage Contracts & Tickets Archive – Tracing the History of Ocean Travel (1850s-1960s)
The Passage Contracts & Tickets collection from GG Archives is a goldmine of historical records, offering a detailed look at transatlantic and global ocean travel from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. This archive provides primary source documents that illustrate how people booked and experienced ocean voyages, whether they were immigrants seeking a new life, wealthy travelers enjoying first-class luxury, or soldiers and civilians navigating wartime conditions.
These passage contracts, tickets, and prepaid receipts document voyages on legendary ocean liners, including the RMS Britannic, SS Nieuw Amsterdam, RMS Queen Mary, SS Leviathan, and SS Normandie. They also highlight the legal agreements, ticket costs, passenger rights, and migration patterns that shaped global maritime history. For researchers, historians, genealogists, and educators, these records provide invaluable insights into the evolution of ocean travel.
Postcards of Steamships and Ocean Liners
The Maritime and Ocean Liner Vintage Postcards collection in the GG Archives is an exceptional visual resource capturing the golden age of ocean travel, steamship lines, and historic ports. This archive is particularly valuable for teachers, students, genealogists, historians, and maritime enthusiasts, as it preserves aesthetic and historical representations of ships, harbors, and cities from the late 19th to mid-20th century.
The "Programs and Concerts" section of the GG Archives is a remarkable collection of onboard entertainment and social events that took place on ocean liners and steamships from the late 19th to mid-20th century. These programs provide a fascinating look into the culture of ocean travel, offering insight into the diversions, traditions, and communal experiences of passengers at sea.
Provisioning Steamships and Ocean Liners
The "Provisions for Steamships and Ocean Liners" index page presents a fascinating look at the logistics and challenges of feeding thousands of passengers and crew aboard transatlantic liners. It highlights how early ocean liners were essentially floating cities, requiring careful planning and provisioning to ensure smooth operations during long voyages.
The Steamship Sanitation Facilities index is a treasure trove of maritime history, documenting the incredible progress in hygiene, sanitation, and passenger comfort from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. These articles showcase how ocean travel transformed from a potentially dangerous, unsanitary experience into a luxurious and safe journey.
Historic Ship Passenger Lists (1880s-1960s): Ellis Island & Beyond
This section of the GG Archives is a treasure trove for anyone researching historical passenger lists, particularly those tied to Ellis Island and other major ports from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. These lists provide a unique snapshot of ocean travel history, covering steamship voyages, migration patterns, and notable passengers.
The collection spans multiple continents, documenting voyages from Europe, North America, Australia, and beyond. With records from major steamship lines like Cunard, White Star, Hamburg America, and North German Lloyd.
Historic Ship Passenger Lists (1880s-1960s): Ellis Island & Beyond section of the GG Archives is an indispensable resource for genealogists, historians, educators, and maritime enthusiasts. Whether you're tracing an ancestor’s journey, researching a historic voyage, or collecting vintage maritime ephemera, this collection preserves and illuminates the rich history of ocean travel and global migration.
Historic Shipboard Publications: Newspapers, Magazines & Bulletins from Ocean Liners
The history of shipboard publications reflects the evolution of maritime journalism, providing passengers with daily news, entertainment, and cultural insights while at sea. These publications—ranging from onboard daily newspapers to high-end travel magazines—were integral to life aboard ocean liners, ensuring passengers remained informed, engaged, and entertained during their voyages.
The "Shipboard Affairs on the Ocean Liners" section explores the diverse and fascinating experiences that unfolded aboard ocean liners, from the operational affairs of the ship’s crew to the romantic and social interactions among passengers. These affairs, whether dealing with love, marriage, or family life at sea, showcase the unique character of ocean travel and how it served as both a mode of transportation and a social microcosm. The "Shipboard Affairs on the Ocean Liners" section serves as a compelling archive of shipboard life, capturing the romantic, familial, and social interactions that made ocean voyages a unique and significant experience in maritime history.
The “Steamship Captains” section offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives, careers, and legacies of these maritime leaders. Through biographies, portraits, and firsthand accounts, this collection sheds light on the qualities that made these captains legendary figures on the high seas and in the history of ocean travel.
Life at Sea: The Unsung Heroes of Ocean Liners – Ship Crew, Roles, and Daily Challenges
The vast world of ocean travel was not only shaped by the grandeur of luxury liners and the experiences of their passengers but also by the hardworking crew who operated the ships, ensured passenger comfort, and navigated through the perils of the sea. This collection of articles provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of stewards, surgeons, stokers, nurses, and other ship personnel who were essential to the operation of transatlantic voyages.
Steamship Lines Archival Collection
View our extensive archival collection of ephemera produced by the various steamship lines that offered passenger service to immigrants, tourists, socialites, and others who crossed the vast oceans, dating from the 1800s through the 1960s.
Ship Tonnage, Weights & Measures: Understanding How Ships Are Classified, Measured, and Taxed
The "Ship Tonnage, Weights, and Measures" section of the GG Archives is an invaluable resource for those interested in the technical, historical, and economic aspects of ship measurement. Whether you are a teacher, student, genealogist, maritime historian, or shipping professional, this section offers detailed insights into the evolution of ship measurement standards and their impact on ocean travel, trade, and taxation. Through historical articles, technical guides, and expert analyses, this collection explores gross tonnage, net tonnage, displacement tonnage, and deadweight tonnage—key measurements that define a vessel's size, cargo capacity, and economic value.
Steamship and Ocean Liner Ports of Call
Ports of Call in the United States, Canada and Europe utilized by steamships during the peak immigration era of 1880-1954 including Boston, New York, Antwerp, Fishguard, Hamburg, Liverpool, London, Rotterdam, Southampton, and others.
Hidden Passengers: The Secret History of Stowaways on Steamships (1850-1928)
This comprehensive collection of articles and reports explores the hidden world of stowaways on steamships, spanning from the 19th to the early 20th century. Through firsthand accounts, investigative journalism, and government reports, the index provides a deep dive into the motivations, risks, and consequences of stowing away.
The fascinating and diverse range of stories includes desperate immigrants evading restrictions, high-society adventurers seeking excitement, and criminal networks profiting from illegal passage. It also highlights how stowaways changed maritime security, immigration policies, and even marine insurance laws.
RMS Titanic Archival Collection
The White Star liner Titanic, the largest ship ever built, bound from Liverpool for New York, collided with an iceberg, four hundred miles off the shore of Newfoundland, on the night of April 14th, and about four hours later sank in water two miles deep.
Covers the development of the steamship from early steamships, propulsion, food service, oceanic travel, rooms, provisions, meals, the immigrant trade and processing of immigrants on board the ocean liners, passenger comforts, evolution of the steamship and much more.
Superb Travel Guide from 1910 Offers general hints on how to adjust oneself to surroundings can prove so useful as on a sea voyage. This book prepares the traveler by informing him how to go, how much it will cost, how to amuse himself, and what to do on arrival at the coveted shore.
Ocean Travel Vintage Advertisements
From the 1880s through the 1950s, many exciting and colorful ads were produced by many steamship lines in support of their services, world tours, new ships, new ports of call, and other related marketing efforts. The GG Archives has an extensive amount of these ads that we will be adding throughout the remainder of 2020 and beyond.
Grand collection of vintage ocean liner and other menus covering breakfast, lunch, dinner, farewell dinner, special occasions, and specialty menus that provide an insight into the variety of foods served on the transatlantic steamships and ocean liners and restaurants from the 1800s through the 1950s.
