As Holland America Line celebrates its 150^th anniversary, people from all over the world can now get a personal look at its role in immigration stories for thousands of families. Back in 2018, CBG | Center for Family History teamed up with Rotterdam City Archives to start digitizing Holland America Line’s passenger lists. These lists are now available on the Rotterdam City Archives website, where anyone can search for a family member who traveled or emigrated with Holland America Line between 1900 and 1969. 

This project, which took three years to complete, could not have been completed without the help of volunteers from the Dutch crowdsourcing platform Many Hands. Those volunteers scanned approximately 150,000 passenger logs and documents and entered them into the database. 

 The oldest preserved list in the database dates to May 3, 1900, beginning with a passenger who left for New York. The last passenger recorded in the database is a traveler who left New Orleans on December 29, 1969. The database includes some surprising information, including children being born onboard and even a dog that traveled all by itself. One notable passenger was a stowaway. On June 30, 1917, the Nieuw Amsterdam departed Rotterdam with one extra passenger. During the trip, the crew found passenger Pieter Kuit did not pay for his trip. The passenger list is marked with a red pen “A stowaway was on board”. 

 There are also some famous passengers found on the passenger lists, including Albert Einstein. He sailed between Rotterdam and New York on the S.S. Rotterdam on March 23, 1921. His name appears on the passenger lists several times over the years.

Anyone who is interested in looking up a name in the database can find it here. 

Instructions For HAL Archive Site

1. Once on the website, use the translate feature to switch from Dutch to English
2. Type first and/or last name in search bar and click search
3. A list will populate with names, departure place and departure date.
4. Select a name to see more detailed information about the voyage.

Advanced Search Features:

• A dollar sign ($) sign before a search term will search for words that are similar.
  • Example: $Einstein
• A question mark (?) replaces a letter
  • Example: Ein?tein
• An asterisk (*) replaces several letters.
  • Example: Einste**
  • If you are unsure of the spelling used by your family member, start with the first letter and asterisk.  This will provide many names and you can narrow the search.  
• Quotation marks (“”) around a search item will only search for that exact name
  • Example: “Einstein”
• In many cases, you will need to review several names from a search until you find the name you are looking for.