Raymond Chandler

Among the most influential of crime fiction writers is Raymond Chandler. In just seven novels he established his protagonist Philip Marlowe as American fiction’s quintessential private detective. He was also behind some of the finest screenwriting Hollywood has seen. Screen adaptations like Double Indemnity bear testament to his innate ability to write for cinema.

Since the 1940s, so many crime and screenwriters have tried to mimic Chandler’s style that, outside his original stories, his characters have become rather clichéd. Within them, however, they have lost almost nothing.

Chandler’s prose is punctuated by a brilliantly clipped style, his ability to convey a time and place - namely 30s and 40s Los Angeles - and of course his sparkling witticisms:

‘Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.’ - Farewell, My Lovely, 1940.

Although an American citizen by birth, Chandler was classically educated at Dulwich College in London, a grounding that shaped him profoundly and made him a confirmed Anglophile for the rest of his days.

Here is Chandler, in 1957, aboard the Queen Elizabeth, on his way back to America following a stay in London:

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He had suffered the death of his wife of 30 years - a blow from which he never fully recovered - 10 months previously, and was battling alcoholism. In a letter to Roger Machell, the Director of his English publishers, he wrote of the journey:

‘The voyage was hell. Still practicing to be a non-drinker (and it’s going to take a damn sight more practice than I have time for). I sat alone in the corner and refused to talk or to have anything to do with other passengers, which did not seem to cause them any grief.’

Upon his death in 1959, but only after a fierce legal battle with a former secretary of Chandler’s, his erstwhile fiancée, Helga Greene, inherited his entire estate.

Here she is aboard the Statendam in 1957:

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Greene also appears within the Passenger Lists for 1938, as a 21-year-old student, bound for New York:

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Passenger Lists now complete with launch of the final decade

Search for ancestors from 1890-1960

The last decade of the Passenger Lists has now been added, allowing you to search from 1890 all the way up to 1960, for ancestors leaving the UK. There are now more than 24 million passengers, across 164,000 exclusive passenger lists.

The 1950s - Elvis, Egypt and Emigration

The 1950s is often seen as a conservative period, in relation to the more radical 60s. Despite this it saw the birth of the teenager, with Rock ‘n’ Roll music emerging from America, the ‘Beat’ writers and the seeds of the Civil Rights movement. The intensifying Cold War between the USA and the USSR was played out in a race for Space: by the decade’s end Sputnik I had been launched.

Britain’s prestige was dealt a blow with the Suez Crisis, in 1956. Rationing was slowly ending, National Service was in place, wide-scale rebuilding after the devastations of World War Two were bearing fruit and thousands of ‘Ten Pound Poms’ took the opportunity to start afresh in Australia. Commercial sea travel was in its last days, with air travel becoming more affordable and prevalent from the 1960s on.

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Notable passengers on board in the 1950s

There are lots of famous faces and notable names in the final decade of the Passenger Lists. One of Hollywood’s greatest stars, Gregory Peck, can be seen aboard the Queen Elizabeth in 1950:

Matt Busby, the manager of Manchester United for many years can be found travelling with his team in May 1950, where Manchester United undertook their first tour of the States. Busby, whose tragic ‘Busby Babes’ died in the Munich Air Disaster in 1958, led the club to success in the European Cup in 1968.

Other notable passengers in the 1950s include Max Factor, Gloria Swanson, Cecil Beaton, Jack Buchanan and Bill Haley.

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Find your ancestors in the Passenger Lists

Search by person or by ship name alone. You can now also narrow your search with the name of a travelling companion. A comprehensive guide to searching the passenger lists can be viewed here

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Our premium Explorer Subscription offers you unlimited access to over 500 million records on findmypast, including the passenger lists, and costs £89.95 for 12 months - the equivalent of just £7.50 a month. The Voyager Subscription gives you 30 days’ unlimited searching of all the Passenger Lists for only £14.95. You can also view the Passenger Lists on a pay-per-view basis. It costs 10 units to view a transcription and 30 units to view, print and save the full-colour digital images.

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New decade added to the Passenger Lists - 1940 - 1949

Findmypast.com has added another decade of records to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists currently available. Records now include 20 million names within 137,000 passenger lists spanning 1890 to 1949.

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1940s - Horrors, Hitler and the aftermath

The first half of the 1940s was one of the darkest periods in history, with global war causing millions of casualties and the horrors of the Holocaust. Buoyed by the USA’s entry following the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Allies eventually secured victory in Europe. Victory in Japan came only after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Following Armistice the world looked once again to rebuild: the ‘Iron Curtain’ descended in the East leading to the beginnings of the Cold War. Thousands of women left their families and homes to start a new life in Canada, America and Australia with the soldiers they had met and married. ‘Home Children’ were sent away to Canada for a better life, with mixed results. Commercial travel increased, as did the possibility of travelling for business, to compete in sports and other events.

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Notable passengers on board in the 1940s

One man whose influence on the decade cannot be overestimated appears in the passenger lists, travelling to America in 1946. Winston Churchill M P, following defeat in the 1945 election as the nation looked toward the social reforms of Attlee’s Labour Party, can be seen with his wife, valet and maid on board the Queen Elizabeth:

The American film star Spencer Tracy may be seen on the Queen Mary:

Whilst the famous sculptor Henry Moore can be found travelling to New York:

Other notable names include Walt Disney, Elia Kazan, Benjamin Britten and Joan Fontaine.

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Find your ancestors in the Passenger Lists

Search by person or by ship name alone. You can now also narrow your search with the name of a travelling companion. A comprehensive guide to searching the passenger lists can be viewed here.

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Our premium Explorer Subscription offers you unlimited access to over 500 million records on findmypast, including the passenger lists, and costs £89.95 for 12 months - the equivalent of just £7.50 a month. The Voyager Subscription gives you 30 days’ unlimited searching of all the Passenger Lists for only £14.95.
You can also view the Passenger Lists on a pay-per-view basis. It costs 10 units to view a transcription and 30 units to view, print and save the full-colour digital images.

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Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh is primarily noted for his novels satirising the upper echelons of English Society, such as Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited. He was, however, also an avid traveller and writer of travel literature.

Waugh can be found twice in the current Passenger Lists on ancestorsonboard.com; once travelling to Tangier in 1933 and once to New York in 1938.

Here he is travelling to Morocco, listed as living at Brook St in London’s Mayfair.

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Here is Waugh, and his second wife Laura, travelling to New York in 1938. His brief marriage to his namesake Evelyn having ended in divorce in 1930.

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Among Waugh’s travel writing is 92 Days, detailing the time he spent in British Guyana and Brazil, a trip which inspired some of the novel A Handful of Dust.

Waugh also wrote about many other African, European and Near-Eastern places, including Abyssinia, Malta, Cairo and Constantinople.

Checking in with your American Ancestors

A feature of the Passenger Lists, from the 1920s on, is the inclusion of a last known address in the UK next to the passenger’s name.

This is of enormous use and interest for family historians - seeing where an ancestor was living before they emigrated or, indeed, went on holiday. It is also an easy way of being sure that the passenger on board is the person that you were searching for.

The inclusion of an address is not only of interest to those searching for passengers who were permanent residents in the UK, however. Viewing the latest decades of the Passenger Lists has revealed a trend, particularly amongst the ‘Aliens’ section of larger cruise ships going to the USA.

A great number of American passengers list London hotels as their last residence in the UK, affording you a fascinating insight into the style in which they lived and, perhaps more specifically, vacationed.

 

With this information in hand you might be tempted to undertake a family history tour of sorts, to retrace your ancestors’ footsteps and check into the hotel at which they stayed many years ago.

Hopefully your ancestors chose somewhere comfortable!

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Prince Aly Khan - divorce and diplomacy

Prince Ali Solomone Khan, known popularly as Prince Aly Khan, was the son of Aga Khan III and is perhaps best known for his association with the sport of horse-racing and his playboy lifestyle.

Khan’s first wife was Joan Guinness, nee Yarde-Buller, whom he married in May 1936, just days after her divorce from Loel Guinness. 

Khan and Guinness’ relationship had begun during her first marriage, with the pair reportedly having ‘occupied a hotel room together from 17 May until 20 May 1935′. Khan was named in the proceedings of the divorce.

A list of divorce and matrimonial causes for 1858-1903 can be searched on findmypast.com. 

The pair can be found travelling together aboard the Colombia in the new decade of the Passenger Lists on ancestorsonboard.com, prior to Guinness’ divorce. Click on the image to enlarge.

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Khan and Guinness divorced in 1949, with Khan going on to marry the Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth in the same year.

The early hedonism of Aly Khan’s life meant that his appointment, in 1957, as the permanent spokesman for Pakistan to the United Nations came as a great surprise to many. Equally surprising was the aptitude for the role that he displayed.

Khan was elected to the post of vice president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1958. Tragically, only two years later, he died following a car accident.

Another decade added to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists 1920 - 1929

Ancestorsonboard.com has added another decade of records to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists currently available. Records now include an incredible 15,749,960 names within 97,614 passenger lists spanning 1890 to 1929.

There’s more information available on the original images than in previous decades, such as each passenger’s last address in the UK, making it easier than ever to fill in the gaps in your research. 

The 1920s - bright young things and abdicating kings

It was the era of decadence and glamour. The Jazz Age in America, epitomised by the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Europe it was The Golden Twenties. With music, entertainment and art people looked to purge themselves of the horrors of The Great War; modernism flourished in both literature and an embracing of technological advances.

In this decade people were beginning to travel not purely out of necessity, but for its own sake. People still emigrated and travelled on business but were now also able to visit their family abroad, enjoy cruises and participate in international sporting events. Immigration to the USA began to tail off as, in 1922, the States looked to close their borders. This led to a growth in people looking to make Canada and, increasingly, Australia their new home.

Famous Names

Amongst the passengers recorded in this new decade are those from the burgeoning world of entertainment and sport. 

Noel Coward, Cary Grant, under his real name Archibald Leach

Albert Warner of the Warner Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford can all be found in the 1920’s passenger lists, as can the Third Lanark Football team.

The now defunct Third Lanark AC’s trip was to raise funds for Scottish exiles in Argentina; a copy of the letter negotiating costs can be viewed here.

Find your ancestors in the Passenger Lists

Search by person or by ship name alone. You can now also narrow your search with the name of a travelling companion. A comprehensive guide to searching the passenger lists can be viewed here.

Start Searching Now

The Voyager Package gives you 30 days’ unlimited searching of all the Passenger Lists for only £15. Our premium Explorer Package offers you unlimited access to over 500 million records on findmypast, including the passenger lists, and costs £125 for 12 months - the equivalent of just £10.50 a month. You can also view the Passenger Lists on a pay-per-view basis. It costs 10 units to view a transcription and 30 units to view, print and save the full-colour digital images.

Sun, sea and ruins

When you see Palestine as a destination in a passenger list, your first thought is that the travellers on board must be pilgrims to the Holy Land. But click on the link below and look more closely at these passengers’ details from 1895. Their ages look wrong - many are in their thirties or forties. Only one of those on board has a title suggesting a religious vocation. Then you remember the full itinerary of the voyage - “South of France, Italy, Palestine etc” - and see that across the first page is written “Tour”. In fact, these travellers are artists and aesthetes, scholars and dilettantes, dabblers in antiquity from the beau monde of the 1890s on a tour of the Mediterranean.

Rev William John Loftie, like many a leisured Victorian clergyman, is an enthusiast in temporal affairs as well as in the saving of souls: in his case, majoring not as an entomologist or an etymologist but as a learned author and antiquarian. Mr Tristram Ellis, Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, is a water-colourist and etcher whose works still fetch good money at auction. Sir John Benjamin Stone, industrialist and MP, when off duty has a passion for photography - he founded the National Photographic Record Association, a kind of pioneering national memory bank, and his collection is now to be found in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and at Birmingham Central Library.

Dig a little deeper beneath the surface of many passenger lists such as this and a whole world begins to emerge.

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Howzat!

Cricket. The game of gentlemen amateurs, sportsmen with long flowing beards and voluminous sideburns, bowlers in, er, bowlers. Eternally travelling south of the Tropic of Capricorn in search of sporting glory. The image of a passenger list from September 1891 shows Lord Sheffield’s Eleven, sailing in First Saloon class from London to Sydney to give the Aussies the customary good drubbing.

Among the XI is the captain WG Grace, the last Victorian cricketer to remain in our early C21st public consciousness. At this date, William Gilbert was a sprightly 43 year old and well able to bat back anything that young pup Shane Warne could have thrown at him. He was to die in 1915, after a decent innings of 67 years.

For more on Grace, visit Wisden here.

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