Preface

Long before the ship made headlines around the world in the spring of 1939, the MS (motor ship) St. Louis was a familiar sight in Halifax. The German transatlantic liner made the city a regular port of call during the 1930s.

Built by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen, Germany, for the Hamburg-America Line, the St. Louis was a diesel-powered ship 175 metres long—about the equivalent length of two soccer fields. Named after King Louis IX of France, the ship could carry 973 passengers.

The St. Louis regularly sailed from Hamburg to Halifax and New York, which, in the 1930s, was dubbed Luxury Liner Row. Ten Atlantic liners could be docked in the American port in one day. Built for both transatlantic liner service and for leisure cruises, the St. Louis made cruises all the way to the West Indies.

Considered a medium-sized liner, the St. Louis operated during an age of splendour for cruising. The 1930s was the peak for the transatlantic liners. Considered by many to be a frivolous endeavour, transatlantic cruising consisted of making a series of calls to exotic ports and ended with a return to the port of origin. During the cruise, passengers were entertained onboard with fine food, music, and dancing. The 1930s was the ultimate age for luxury, size, splendour, even fantasy for the great liners, according to William Miller, the author of several books on ocean liners and cruise ships.

A Regular Port of Call

The St. Louis’s maiden voyage to Halifax was in 1929 and came at a critical time in the port’s history. Halifax was bustling. In 1928, Halifax Harbour was considered the second-largest natural harbour in the world, surpassed only by Sydney, Australia. It was a port of call for “most of the large cabin class passenger vessels enroute from Europe to New York,” according to a February 1929 brief from the Halifax Harbour Commission. It was considered the Canadian port for regular cargo and passenger service, as well as coastal services for passenger and freight.

In 1928, the city had completed an ocean terminals project that was critical in attracting ocean liners. The project offered large piers with full railway access, refrigerated storage, grain elevators, and an integrated train station, hotel, and immigration terminal at Pier 21. The additions allowed liners to quickly and easily dock and let passengers off. The long stretch of Piers 20, 21, and 22 could even dock two of the biggest liners in the world at the same time.

Halifax became an attractive port for small and medium-sized liners like the St. Louis, or the Cunard Line’s Ascania, which visited the city more than two hundred times. Halifax was often an intermediate port where the liners would stop to let off Canadian passengers and immigrants before continuing on to larger ports like New York.

The St. Louis called on Halifax at least two dozen times. During this period, the Halifax port had forty-eight shipping lines using its facilities, and as many as 1,600 steamers used the port in 1929. There were other ships that regularly called on Halifax including the Kungsholm of the Swedish-American Line and the Minnewaska of American Transport Lines.

The St. Louis’s last recorded visit to the Halifax port was in April 1939, just one month before it set off for Havana on its infamous voyage with more than nine hundred Jewish refugees onboard.