William H. Miller – författare

The spectacular French flagship France, the longest liner ever built, was the latest transatlantic supership when completed in the 1960s, and, according to most early reports, the most luxurious liner then afloat. The last of the great French Line passenger ships, on the celebrated run to and from New York she was not only the national flagship, but went on to have a most fortunate life with two noted careers and two highly recognisable names. She was one of the greatest of all twentieth-century liners.Maiden voyage passengers goggled at the luxuries aboard the $80 million floating masterpiece with her fantastic interiors, superb service and most exquisite food, yet despite her success she eventually lost out to the unsurpassable speed of jet aircraft. Laid-up, she lingered for five years before being bought by the Norwegians in 1979 and was dramatically transformed from the indoor, transatlantic France into the outdoor, tropical Norway. By May 1980, she began sailing in Caribbean waters and, for years afterward, ranked as the largest cruise ship in the world: an innovator and a great prelude to today's mega-liners. A tribute to one of the grandest and most beloved of all twentieth-century ocean liners, in this richly illustrated book by acknowledged liner expert William Miller we salute the France/Norway!

It was an age of evolution, when size and speed were almost the ultimate considerations. ‘Bigger was said to be better’ and ship owners were not exempted from the prevailing mood. While the German four-stackers of 1897-06 and then Cunard's brilliant Mauretania & Lusitania of 1907 led the way to larger and grander liners. White Star Line countered by 1911 with the Olympic, her sister Titanic and a near-sister, the Britannic. The French added the France while Cunard took delivery of the beloved Aquitania. But the Germans won out -- they produced the 52,000-ton Imperator and a near-sister, the Vaterland, the last word in shipbuilding and engineering prior to the First World War. They and their sister, the Bismarck, remained the biggest ships in the world until 1935. But other passenger ships appear in this decade - other Atlantic liners, but also ships serving on more diverse routes: Union Castle to Africa, P&O to India and beyond, the Empress liners on the trans-Pacific run. We look at a grand age of maritime creation, ocean-going superlative, but also sad destruction in the dark days of the First War. It was, in all ways, a fascinating period.

The world of ocean liners, those built for French lines were the epitome of style and panache, and SS Normandie perhaps the pinnacle of this. When she entered service in 1935, she was the largest, longest, fastest and certainly the best fed ship of her time, serving the finest food imaginable in a dining room longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Normandie embodied high glamour and was a firm favourite of many, albeit for a short time. Times were changing and even the French government's massive subsidies to the builders, an attempt to make Normandie a flagship for the drive out of the Depression. could only work for so long, as the Second World War drew nearer. She might have been a valuable troopship, and served a the USS Lafayette for a time, but caught fire at her New York pier in 1942. The great ship was salvaged, but with an expensive restoration in prospect she could not escape being scrapped in 1946-47. Through beautiful illustrations and evocative writing, William H.Miller presents the story of one of the most lavish liners ever to cross the seas.

France produced some of the finest and best-decorated passenger ships of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1912 with the four-funnel France, the nostalgic voyage continues with the great and grand transatlantic liners of the French Line, the CGT. These include the famous Île-de-France, Normandie and Liberté, as well as the lesser passenger ships of the French Line. In addition, focus is given to Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique, Transports Maritimes and Chargeurs Réunis operating important South American routes and to Messageries Maritimes running in Africa, the East and the South Pacific. Packed full of nostalgic reminiscence of great ship days gone by, the book explores majestic liners, mail boats to Africa and colonial steamers to Saigon. Presenting many previously unpublished images alongside insightful text and anecdotes, William H. Miller brings the reader on board France’s greatest transatlantic liners.

The year 1955 came at the height of a boom for passenger ships. World War II had ended a decade before, business was restored, global markets had reopened, and shipping for trade and transport was in high demand. Picture Encyclopedia of Passenger Ships 1955 is an international directory of worldwide passenger ships and their services in that peak year, when one could sail from Liverpool to Valparaiso, Genoa to Cape Town, or Hong Kong to San Francisco. Over 150 vessels are included, with photographs, itineraries and essential statistics, covering all the great shipping lines of the 1950s and their routes to every corner of the globe.

Entering service in 1938, the Nieuw Amsterdam was the Holland America Line flagship until the construction of the Rotterdam in the late 1950s. Her prewar life was short and she was used as a troopship during the Second World War, carrying many thousands of Allied troops to all corners of the world. Of 36,000 tons, she was the largest vessel built in Rotterdam and was launched by Queen Wilhelmina in April 1937.A perennial favourite of the Dutch and their finest Ship of State, Nieuw Amsterdam remained in Holland America Line service until 1974, the last ship to retain the Holland America Line’s familiar green, yellow and white funnels.Despite boiler problems in 1967, she was refitted with US Navy-surplus boilers and sailed on, cruising, until withdrawn from service in 1974. Sailing to the breakers, the art deco ‘Darling of the Dutch’, as she was affectionately known, was broken up.Today, she still has a following, from those who sailed on her but also from those who have grown to appreciate the importance of the Nieuw Amsterdam in terms of ocean liner design.

The 1954 film On the Waterfront brought to life the New York docks of the 1950s, when it was often said that a ship, usually a freighter, arrived or departed every 24 minutes, around the clock. Now, the Port of New York is handling more cargo than ever before, but all of it containerised. Along the Waterfront, a follow on to Along the Hudson (which looked at passenger ships in the Port of New York), covers the vast and fascinating fleet of freighters that once called at New York, including ships and companies that did not quite make it, such as the Bull Line, Standard Fruit, Torm Lines and the Booth Steamship Company.In this book, William H. Miller takes the reader on an evocative trip back to the days of the New York docks as they were portrayed in On the Waterfront.

Founded in 1873, the Holland America Line provided services carrying passengers and freight between the Netherlands and North America. When the Second World War ended, only nine of Holland America Line’s twenty-five ships had survived and the company set about rebuilding. The pride of HAL’s post-war fleet was SS Rotterdam, completed in 1959, which was one of the first ships on the North Atlantic equipped to offer two-class transatlantic crossings and single-class luxury cruising. However, competition from the airlines meant that in the early 1970s Holland America ended their transatlantic passenger services; in 1973 the company sold its cargo-shipping division.Now owned by the American cruise line Carnival, Holland America offers round-the-world voyages and cruises in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and Asia. In this book, renowned ocean liner historian and author William H. Miller takes a look at the Holland America Line and its post-war fleet up to 2015.

The Royal Mail has, for over 500 years, provided a crucial service in keeping people connected by land, sea and air. As the British Empire grew, so too did the need for a fleet of liners to service it, and in 1839 Queen Victoria granted the initial Royal Charter incorporating the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. After running into financial trouble, the company was reconstituted as Royal Mail Lines in 1930.With his superb collection of rare images, Bill Miller brings to life the ships that operated for the line in the twentieth century. Covering the turbulent period of the Second World War, as well as more peaceful and prosperous times, this collection of images illuminates the stories behind some of the great iconic liners. Some of the ships featured include RMS Asturias and RMS Alcantara, at the time the largest motor ships in the world, and the RMS Magdalena, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1949.

The period from the end of the Second World War to the late 1960s marked a golden era for the traditional port-to-port class-divided passenger ship business. It was an age of re-awakening, with the wealthy and adventurous seeking new experiences abroad and countless migrants wanting to leave war-shattered Europe for new lives and opportunities overseas. On the liners, everyone was catered for: from passengers such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who required suites of luxurious rooms with space to unpack over a hundred pieces of luggage, to penniless migrants carrying nothing more than an overnight bag, for whom a berth in a fifty-bed dormitory was all that was needed. Atlantic crossings were popular throughout the period, but there were also three- and four-class ships to South America, combination passenger-cargo services carrying only 100 or so travelers, fast mail ships to South Africa, colonial passenger vessels to East Africa, crowded migrant sailings to Sydney and Auckland, and trans-Suez and trans-Pacific passages. This was an era when long-distance travel was entirely dependent on the ocean liners.Post-War on the Liners examines, through fascinating anecdotes and detailed research, the many passenger ship services of this bygone era, recapturing the charm, practicality, and importance of post-war sea travel. From the magnificent-Cunarders Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, Italian Line's Augustus, Union-Castle's Bloemfontein Castle, P&O's Oronsay, and Shaw Savill's Southern Cross-to the lesser known-Fyffes Line's Golfito, Royal Mail's Amazon, Sitmar Line's Fairsea, and NYK Line's Hikawa Maru-this book reveals the unique qualities of individual ships and why they were so often regarded with affection by the men and women who travelled and served on them.

The story of the Great Liners begins on the Atlantic route between the Old World and the New, between Europe and the United States. It was the most prestigious, most progressive and certainly most competitive ocean liner run of all time. It was on the North Atlantic that the largest, fastest and indeed grandest passenger ships were created. In this book, William Miller concentrates for the most part on these Atlantic superliners. It has been a race, sometimes fierce, that has continued for well over a century. Smaller passenger ships, even ones of 30,000 and 40,000 tons, are for the most part left to other books. The story begins even earlier, in 1889, when Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II visited his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and attended the British Naval Review at Spithead. The British were more than pleased to show off not only the mightiest naval vessels afloat, but the biggest passenger ships then afloat, namely the 10,000-ton 'Teutonic' of the White Star Line. These ships caught the Kaiser's royal eye. His enthusiasm, his determination and, assuredly, his jealousies were aroused. Her returned to his homeland determined that Germany should have bigger and better ships.The world must know, he theorized, that Imperial Germany had reached new and higher technological heights.To the Kaiser and other envious Germans, the British had, quite simply, had a monopoly on the biggest ships long enough. British engineers and even shipyard crews were recruited, teaching German shipbuilders the key components of a new generation of larger ships. Shipyards at Bremen, Hamburg and Stettin were soon ready. It would all take eight years, however, before the first big German liner would be completed. She would be large enough and fast enough to be dubbed the world's first "super liner". She would only be the biggest vessel built in Germany, but the biggest afloat. The nation's most prominent shipowners, the Hamburg America Line and the North German Lloyd, were both deeply interested. It was the Lloyd, however, which rose first to the occasion. Enthusiastically and optimistically, the first ship was the first of a successive quartet. The illustrious Vulkan Shipyard at Stettin was given the prized contract. Triumph seemed to be in the air! The Kaiser himself went to the launching, on 3 May 1897, of this new Imperial flagship.Designed with four funnels but grouped in pairs, the 655-ft long ship was named 'Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse', honoring the Emperor's grandfather.With the rattle of chains, the release of the building blocks and then the tumultuous roar as the unfinished hull hit the water, this launching was the beginning of the Atlantic race for supremacy, which would last for some 70 years. Only after the first arrival of the trans-Atlantic jet in October 1958 would the race quiet down. The 'Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse' was the great beginning, the start of a superb fleet of what has been dubbed "ocean greyhounds" and later aptly called the "floating palaces". Worried and cautious, the normally contented British referred to the brand new Kaiser as a "German monster".

"Serving on the Big Ships: Life on the Liners" looks at passenger ship history from the perspective of recollections, impressions, and anecdotes of those who sailed these fine, but largely bygone vessels. It covers the last golden age of ocean liner travel, beginning in the 1950s and continuing into the 1970s and '80s. It reflects a pre-airline age-when passengers sailed from A to B, from port to port. It was before liners turned to cruising and where ports were more entertainment than destination. Staff members - from captains to stewards-recall the likes of Cunard & Holland-America on the North Atlantic, the Italian Line to the Mediterranean, Royal Mail Lines to South America, Union-Castle to Africa and P&O-Orient to Australia & the Far East.

On All the Seven Seas: Travel Aboard Passenger Ships is a collection of stories of various sea and river voyages made by the author in the 1980s. Some ships featured are now gone, leaving precious memories that have become the substance of pure maritime nostalgia. Others are still plying the globe, taking on new passengers, generating new memories with every stretch of water crossed. The stories include experiences on vessels as illustrious as QE2 and as obscure as Poland's little Stefan Batory. Going far beyond the ordinary, the author recounts taking a twelve-passenger containership to the Far East, joining a mail steamer along the fabled Norwegian coast in the depths of winter, and getting swept up in a carnival cruise in the sunny Caribbean. On All the Seven Seas is a love letter to the world’s rivers, seas and oceans and the passenger-carrying vessels that ply them.

“Little Bill” Miller—one of the country’s foremost relaxation experts—has been paid as high as $100 an hour for his services. Jittery business men…harassed war wives…Army aviation cadets—thousands of people, young and old, have benefited—both in mind and body—from “Little Bill’s” training! Famous college and professional teams have engaged his services.This famous “One Hundred Dollar Course” is now set forth in book form. Sprinkled with personal anecdotes, HOW TO RELAX tells how great performers have learned to relax and conserve their energies. And it tells how you can develop this same vital energy-hoarding quality that lies dormant within you!Here are described specifically all of Miller’s exercises—for relaxation in the office, in the kitchen, one the bowling alley, the golf course, the tennis court, on the great professional and college playing fields and in our military training camps.Use this formula by one of the country’s foremost relaxation experts, and it will teach you how to give more at the right time, less at the wrong time, and reap greater results and rewards!William H. Miller is a former business man to whom body control became a religion. He resigned to preach his faith full time and as a result the “Miller Method” has hundreds of thousands of disciples in all walks of life and in every branch of sport. This is one of the few systems which has clearly demonstrated that a loose, energy-conserving body means a keener mind in the “clutch.”“He has relaxed more than 10,000 people, aged 5 to 75, has loosened up college football and basketball teams, a professional baseball club, Army aviation cadets.”—TIME Magazine

At a time when everything is constantly changing, it can be comforting to look back. British Passenger Liners in Colour is just that: a look back at a time when the British-flag passenger fleet spanned the world from Southampton to South America.Using glorious full-colour images, many previously unseen, acclaimed maritime historian William H. Miller embarks on a voyage through a golden era of ocean liners. From Anchor Line to the Union-Castle Line, RMS Aquitania *to MS *Vistafjord, they all return to the high seas in this beautiful book, one for all ocean-liner enthusiasts to enjoy. Shipping Co, Orient Line, P&O and Shaw Savill Line.

The great passenger liners of the twentieth century make for iconic images of maritime history and design. Ships of Splendour presents the development of passenger ships across the twentieth century, from the 1920s, through the 1940s, and the heyday of the 1950s and ’60s, until the onset of the jet age.The fleet includes famous passenger ships, such as the great Cunarders; titans of the North Atlantic, like the United States, France and Michelangelo and other icons, including the Southern Cross, Windsor Castle, Canberra and Oriana. Homage is also paid to the smaller liners, which were just as important in shaping the history of modern seafaring – ships such as the Aureol, Batory, Guglielmo Marconi, Hanseatic, Queen of Bermuda and Willem Ruys. Replete with notes, facts and anecdotes about these ships, the history of the passenger liner is broken down ship-by-ship and decade-by-decade. These ships return to the high seas once again in superb detail and vibrant colour.

Acclaimed maritime historian William H. Miller presents a vivid collection of photographs charting a century of cruising the ocean waves from the 1920s to the start of the current cruising boom. 100 Years of Cruise Ships in Colour includes many early, often seasonal, liners, along with the more purposeful generation of ‘floating hotels’ that began in the 1960s.There are favourites, such as the pre-Second World War Franconia, Reliance, Nieuw Amsterdam and Normandie; then, in greater numbers, a ‘fleet’ starting from the 1950s and ’60s – ships such as the Caronia, Andes, Queen of Bermuda, Nassau, Italia, Bahama Star, Reina Del Mar, Oceanic, Skyward, Song of Norway, Hamburg, Royal Viking Star and Queen Elizabeth 2. Finally, steaming into the twenty-first century, we see the likes of the Royal Princess, Statendam, Crystal Symphony, Oriana, Queen Mary 2, Allure of the Seas and Viking Star.This is a magnificent ‘scrapbook’ of a great and grand generation of ships.

It is hard to think of the passenger liners from the golden era of Mediterranean cruising without also conjuring the nostalgic, dream-like vision of azure-blue waters, bright sunshine and swimming pools with clusters of umbrellas and sunbathing passengers. The great age of Mediterranean passenger liners began in the 1920s when the Italians built their first big ships, such as the Augustus, Saturnia and Conte Grande. In the 1930s, things got really interesting with the creation of the superliners Rex and Conte di Savoia. In the 1950s and ’60s, as Italy built a huge post-war fleet, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Israel commissioned their biggest ships yet. William Miller has written ninety books on passenger ships and is an acknowledged world expert in his field. Full of colour and the first-hand memories of passengers and crew, this endearing reflection on the majestic world of Mediterranean travel cannot be missed. Quick, the whistles are sounding!

This is the story of the last class-divided passenger ships that carried travellers from point to point. In the final years of activity, spanning from the 1940s to the 1960s, they carried Hollywood stars and even royalty on the Atlantic, businessmen to South America and Africa, migrants to Australia and New Zealand, and visitors returning to European homelands. Last of the Blue Water Liners nods to the Atlantic liners but also revels in the many other passenger ships that plied trades around the world: vessels like the Antilles, Oslofjord, Kampala and Changsha. Complete with rare images and the insight of the prolific maritime historian William H. Miller, this book is a nostalgic parade of a bygone age, a generation of ships all but swept away in the 1960s and 1970s as jet travel changed the world.

Freighters of the 1950s and ’60s – with masts, booms and hatches – were the last of their generation. It was the end of an era, just before the massive transition to faster, more efficient containerised shipping on larger and larger vessels. These were ‘working ships’, but many would be retired prematurely and finish up under flags of convenience, for virtually unknown owners, before going off to the scrappers in the 1970s and ’80s. For some ships, their life’s work was cut short and their decommissioning was quick. In Handling Cargo, William H. Miller remembers the likes of Cunard, Holland America and United States Lines on the North Atlantic, Moore McCormack Lines to South America, Farrell Lines to Africa and P&O out East.

In the early 1950s it seemed as if Greek shipping companies were springing up everywhere. For a country almost unknown as a passenger ship-owning state, the likes of the Greek Line, Chandris and Epirotiki burst onto the scene, often using second hand tonnage and ships acquired from the Western European fleets that were being updated. The lines soon took advantage of the mass emigration from Europe to Australia and New Zealand as well as cruising, which was then in its infancy. Although many of the Greek lines such as Royal Olympic Cruises are now gone, the likes of Chandris still survives today as Celebrity Cruises. Bill Miller, the noted maritime historian, brings together a collection of images of his favourite Greek liners and tells of the history of the Greek fleets that made the world of cruising so exciting in the last half century.

This new series begins with British passenger ship, those great and grand vessels that connected the continents, but also those far-off, colonial outposts of the Empire. There were the great Cunarders, of course, but then also the likes of Booth Line to the exotic Amazon, Royal Mail to Rio & Buenos Aires, Union Castle to South & East Africa, British India to the likes of Bombay & Calcutta, and of course the iconic P&O to ports such as Sydney, Singapore & colonial Hong Kong. The passenger ships covered in these pages are both large and small, and also included are passenger-cargo types. Presenting many previously unpublished images alongside historic, insightful text that combines personal anecdotes of the ships and their voyages from passengers and crew alike, Bill Miller takes the reader on a nostalgic voyage - an evocative trip looking at days long past.

America produced some of the world’s finest, most interesting, advanced and innovative passenger ships, such as the brilliant SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever to sail the seas, ingloriously left lying in limbo for 42 years. This book also documents passenger ships seized in wartime, notably the giant German Vaterland, which became the Leviathan of the United States Lines, as well as many newly built passenger ships, such as Santa Rosa, Lurline, President Cleveland, Independence and Brasil. Also included are peacetime troopships as well as ‘combo ships’, the once very popular passenger-cargo ships. The great saga of American liners continues to this day with modern cruise ships in Hawaiian service. The cast of ships is both vast and varied, but endlessly fascinating. Presenting many unpublished images alongside historic, insightful text including personal anecdotes of the ships and voyages from passengers and crew alike, Bill Miller takes the reader on a nostalgic voyage and the great American passenger fleet sails once again!

This beautifully illustrated history portrays two of the French fleet’s most glamorous liners in their post-war heyday. Île de France was a ship with unique style and character, restored and re-launched in 1949 after wartime service as a troopship. Liberté was built as the German Europa in 1930, but was ceded to France in 1946 and restyled in French Line luxury. The ships were famed for their service and on-board ambience, but most of all for being the ‘best-fed liners on the Atlantic’. Each ended their days on the silver screen, Île de France as a prop in The Last Voyage, for which she was partly sunk in 1958, and Liberté in the closing scenes of the classic film Sabrina before being scrapped in 1961. William H. Miller’s latest work in the Classic Liners series brings together an unrivalled collection of images, including previously unpublished colour photography, and truly evokes the glamour of two of the most beloved ocean liners of the era.

On both sides of the Hudson River, along the Manhattan and Hoboken waterfronts, for the best part of a century, millions of people teemed out of ocean liners, bound for a new life in North America. Lines such as North German Lloyd, Cunard, White Star, Holland America, Swedish America and the Hamburg Amerika Line all disgorged their human cargo into the USA. By the 1920s, mass emigration to America had all but finished. But there was a new breed of traveler, the tourist, the businessman and the cruiser. The largest ships had always been seen as Ships of State, certainly since the German fliers of the early twentieth century, and the new breed of ocean liner was glamorous beyond compare. Designed to capture the cream of the passenger trade, they were luxurious and fast, with world-class restaurants. Ships such as the Andrea Doria, the Stockholm, Cunard's Queens, Mary and Elizabeth, the SS United States, the SS Rotterdam and the Independence and Constitution all vied for the public's affection. These ships and many others sailed into what became known as Luxury Liner Row, that short strip of real estate sandwiched between the Lincoln Highway and the Hudson. William H Miller tells the story of the ships on Luxury Liner Row, with many photographs illustrating the glamour, the luxury and the sheer buzz of New York's waterfront in the 1950s and 60s.