A Century of Sea Travel: Personal Accounts from the Steamship Era

This “handsome volume” offers a “lavishly illustrated” journey back to the golden age of steam travel through first-hand accounts and images of the passengers (Bruce Peter, author of Ship Style).

A Century of Sea Travel is an eye-opening voyage through the golden years of the passenger steamship, a voyage described by the very travelers who sailed on these magnificent engineering marvels. In memoirs and letters home, diaries and the backs of postcards, the recorded experiences of every aspect of steamship travel are here relived: from details of the ships, the crew, and fellow passengers; to the food and entertainment on board; to tales of romance, accidents, and disasters; and of being dreadfully sick during storms at sea. The writers were emigrants or colonial rulers, men of letters, young men seeking their fortune, wives on their way to new homes abroad; some were rich, many were poor and escaping the hardship of downtrodden lives. All had in common the experience of voyaging at sea.

Vividly brought to life by full-color and black-and-white postcards, travel posters, promotional brochures, fine art, photographs, maps, luggage labels, health inspection certificates, and itineraries, the authors have woven together word and image into a page-turning narrative that evocatively describes an age (1840–1950) now lost to time.

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