"A World History of Passenger Ships: A Chronicle of Ocean-Going Liners That Connected the World"

2019/01/15

The era of 17th-century clipper ships, where Chinese tea, Australian wool, and whale oil were the primary cargo, came to an end. As soon as the Cunard Line began regular transatlantic service in 1840, steamships began carrying passengers.

Since then, European nations opened steamship routes to transport settlers and entered the competition to secure colonies. Following the birth of the United States, immigrants from Western Europe flooded in to support domestic development. It was steamships that transported these travelers.

The foundation for my decision to tackle this theme is as follows. While working in the shipping industry for over 40 years, I developed an interest in world maritime history, particularly in passenger ships as a means of intercontinental human movement. As a member of The World Ship Society in the UK, I have conducted research by collecting foreign books while interacting with fellow enthusiasts abroad.

Although numerous books on passenger ships have been published in the UK and Germany, they are limited to the histories of shipping companies or individual vessels; I could find none that systematically dealt with the transition of global transportation (the flow of people and goods). Feeling that this was a missing piece, I decided to take on the challenge.

This book begins with the people who devoted themselves to applying the steam engine to ships, profiles individuals who dedicated their lives to the improvement and development of steamships, and introduces the shipping executives who sent completed steamships racing across the vast oceans. In the process of writing, the image emerged of these individuals who loved ships from the bottom of their hearts and were fascinated by building and operating them.

In that sense, this book describes how the ships and people who wove history played a role in creating the map of the world. I believe it will serve as a suitable reference for researchers interested in this dramatic theme. Furthermore, I hope it will help readers consider the issue that our country cannot survive without maritime transport, rather than viewing steamships merely as objects of interest.

In this book, in addition to routes from Europe and Japan to North America, the Far East, Africa, and the South American continent, I also touched upon the devotion of steamships during the World Wars. It is also easy to read as it includes many photographs.

"A World History of Passenger Ships: A Chronicle of Ocean-Going Liners That Connected the World"

Hisashi Noma (Author)

Ushio Shobo Kojin Shinsha

456 pages, 3,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and job titles are as of the time of publication.