Red Star Line
 |
|
| Joint venture | |
| Industry | Shipping, transportation |
| Successor | Holland-America Line |
| Founded | 1871 |
| Defunct | 1935 |
|
Area served
|
Transatlantic |
| Website | www |
The Red Star Line was an ocean passenger line founded in 1871 as a joint venture between the International Navigation Company of Philadelphia, which also ran the American Line, and the Société Anonyme de Navigation Belgo-Américaine of Antwerp, Belgium. The company's main ports of call were Antwerp in Belgium, Liverpool and Southampton in the United Kingdom and New York City and Philadelphia in the United States. The company operated until 1935 when, due to the economic depression, it ceased trading. Its assets were eventually sold to the Holland-America Line.
The company was founded by Clement Griscom, who led it from its founding until the International Mercantile Marine Co. took it over in 1902. Red Star Line survived IMM's financial crisis in 1915. In the 1930s Red Star Line was part of Arnold Bernstein Line.
The former warehouses of the Red Star Line in Antwerp were designated as a landmark and reopened as a museum on 28 September 2013 by the City of Antwerp. The main focus of the museum is the travel stories that could be retrieved through relatives of the some two million Red Star Line passengers. In the exhibition the visitor follows the travelers' tracks from the travel agency in Warsaw until their arrival in New York. The museum exhibits works of art depicting the Red Star Line emigrants by the Antwerp artist Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875-1930), together with Red Star Line memorabilia from the collection of Robert Vervoort.
About a quarter of the some two million Red Star Line migrants were Jews, largely from Eastern Europe until the exodus driven by the rise of Nazi Germany. Among them were many famous persons, including regular passenger Albert Einstein. On learning of the Nazi confiscation of his possessions, Einstein chose not to return to Germany; his letter resigning from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, written on the line's stationery, is a part of the museum exhibit. Other notable emigrants included the five-year-old Irving Berlin.
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Wikipedia