Holland America Celebrates over 150 years of cruising.

Holland America has created a database of passenger logs from 1900 to 1969 as part of their 150th anniversary celebration. The online database allows people to search for family names and famous individuals who sailed on Holland America ships. The database is accessible for free through the Holland America blog. The company plans to continue adding to the database in the future. Holland America has a long history, surviving two world wars and the invention of airplanes. They now have a fleet of 11 cruise ships and offer unique itineraries, including Alaska cruises. Libraries are also being reintroduced onto the ships. To access the database, visit hollandamerica.com/blog. The following interview took place on April 4th, 2023, and it's a copyrighted production of the Call Radio Communications Group. What do Albert Einstein, Eddie Van Halen, and possibly you have in common? Your moment in tech is next. The answer is they both sailed to America aboard Holland America's Ram Dam, and maybe you or a relative did as well. As part of Holland America's 150th anniversary celebration, they've put together a database listing the passenger logs from 1900 to 1969. Here with me is Eric Elviord, Director of Public Relations, and Carl Hensley, Public Relations Specialist for Holland America, and that's HollandAmerica.com, to give us some details. Carl, tell us about the database program. So this database is really awesome. So what has happened is the City of Rotterdam Archives has teamed up with the Center of Family History, and they started digitizing Holland America Lines passenger lists from 1900 to 1969. There was a team of volunteers. It took them three years to put this together. They scanned around 150,000 passenger logs and documents and entered them into this online database, and now anyone can go on their website and search family names, anyone possibly famous that might have sailed on a Holland America ship, and it pulls up all the details of where they left, the date, how long the voyage was, who else was on the ship with them. It's a plethora of information that is available at your fingertips. So access, how can we access that? So it's a simple website. We've linked it to the Holland America blog. There's a great article on there that links to that website, and it also provides some pretty simple instructions on how to use it, and it's free. So you just go on our blog. You can find the link there and start searching. Okay, and where's the blog at? It's HollandAmerica.com backslash blog. How long will the database be up? As far as we know, it's up permanently. It's, you know, it's a database that a lot of hard work went into putting it together, and we want to make sure that everyone has access to it. There's no, to my knowledge, there's no date of taking it down, and from my understanding, they're going to be adding to it in the coming years. I know I've accessed the database already. It's in, it starts out in a different language, but if you look at the top, it says English and you just press on English and the translation is there. Yes, and I've, we've included a bunch of easy-to-use instructions on our blog for this website. And will it be added to in the future? Yeah, I believe so, and I think, Eric, you have a better idea of what that looks like. Yeah, I mean, this is all part of the city archives of Rotterdam, and keep in mind Holland America Line is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, so we are an institution in Rotterdam. I mean, you know, we were there from a long time, so when you get to the archives, think of a city archives, Holland America Line is a huge part of the archives. It's old menus, it's old posters, it's records, it's letters, it's ship books and passenger lists and there is tons of stuff around Holland America Line. So that's why they got this idea to put together the ship lists and digitize them so people could search and see, you know, when their relatives sailed and did they go to America or did they go to Canada, many other places. And so it took them probably five plus years to get this information into the system that they've got in there now, and it was all volunteers that did it. They spent a lot of time doing things at home. The pandemic actually helped them because people were at home needing things to do, and they're intending to go further back as well and get more information into the system. So it's a fantastic resource, very dedicated. They've done a wonderful job of pulling some of this stuff together so far. And as you opened up, it's pretty cool who sailed over to America with Holland America Line and, you know, just I'll drop a couple of other names out that I'll drop some names for you. From Ralph Baer, considered the founder of video games, his traces, his history from the family coming over to America on a Holland America Line ship. Frank Oz of Muppets fame also has his family traced coming over on Holland America Line and a huge Elvis fan. Colonel Tom Parker was Dutch. He lived in Rotterdam for a while, came to the States. We have a record of him being deported back to the Netherlands, and because he was a stowaway. And then we don't really have a record of him coming back to the States. So there was probably some way he got here, could have been another stowaway perhaps. But he is Dutch and he came to America at least once on a Holland America Line ship. So Eric, you just mentioned 150 years of longest operating travel companies. What are some of the major highlights of 150 years? I, you know, two world wars, the invention of the airplane. I mean, you think 150 years back, I mean, they started the company, you know, with one ship and Rotterdam became, because they built a waterway at the time, Rotterdam evolved into the largest port in Europe. It's not some, I'd have to look at the numbers, but some even say it's the largest port in the world because of all the commerce. And then of course the immigration took place as well. But they managed to get through two world wars, a depression, the airplane that came along that kind of destroyed transatlantic travel for a while. Eventually the company, we evolved from being both a cargo and a cruise line into just a cruise line. And in the late seventies, early eighties, the company was purchased by Carnival Cruise Lines, who's our current owner. And that really became a point of expansion where the ship went from three cruise ships at the time or two, depending on which year you chose, to a line of up to 14 ships. And then the pandemic, there were a few older ships that were sold and we're currently at 11 cruise ships, a fleet of 11 ships. So it's a pretty amazing timeframe when you think about it and managing to get through some really stressful times when you think about the war and the number of ships that were sunk in a depression. And this is the, when you think about the cruise industry, we've weathered quite a few storms over the years and there's some really proud moments. I mean, our ships took thousands upon thousands of soldiers to Europe to fight in World War II, in addition to commerce and cargo and supplying folks. For a while, one of the Dutch ships was the government of the Netherlands during the war and just an amazing history in that regard. And then you come full circle to currently and 11 ships. We have our seventh Rotterdam, that was our first ship. We now have our seventh version of the Rotterdam coming back out of the pandemic and sailing to seven continents, exploring the world, if you will. So, you know, what does the future bring for us? It's going to bring a little bit more, I think, enhancement and evolution of what we do. We're known for longer itineraries. We're known for seeing the world. So we're, for example, in 2024, we're going to be doing a new itinerary that goes up to the Arctic. We'll, we're doing a number of like a transatlantic of Africa, I'm sorry, a circumnavigation of Africa, circumnavigation of Australia. So a lot of unique things that are in the mix. And Jay, as you know, I mean, we're well known for being the Alaska cruise line. Having explored in Alaska for 75 years, we have six ships that will sail in Alaska every summer and it's a hugely popular destination. And we get more first time cruisers in Alaska than any other destination, because that's really how you can see Alaska efficiently and inexpensively and conveniently. So we're going to see more of the same. I think you're going to see new food. I think you're going to probably see some new entertainment in the coming years. You know, I can't really predict the future of what's coming, but I can guarantee there's going to be always something new and to evolve and create some new onboard experiences. And we'll always be looking for new ports and new itineraries to mix it up. People that sail with us love to explore. So we got to, we got to kind of keep finding different things and doing unique, unique cruises and mixing up what we have to give them something a little bit different because that's what they're going to come back for. Well, something that's returning to the ships are the libraries. Absolutely. Yeah, very much indeed. Yeah, we're in the process of putting the libraries back into the ships. Some of them never left and some were kind of converted into other uses. But they're definitely coming back as ships go into dry dock in particular. For example, the Koningsdam just received its library. So those are definitely some things that are going to come back with new books, new titles for those folks that enjoy libraries and want to read a book that's not on a Kindle and sit back on a deck and read a book. They're going to have that option here. And again, how do we access the site? Yeah, so to access the archive site, you can just go to the Holland America blog. It's hollandamerica.com backslash blog. And there's an article that links to the archive website and also includes some really easy instructions on how to access and use the archive website. Now it's time for you to go take a look for yourself. For Your Moment of Tech, this is Jay Melnick.