Embarking on a new life

The Red Star Line Museum is an exciting, multi-layered project. As a cultural and heritage landmark, it breathes new life into the shipping company’s original warehouses overlooking the Scheldt in Antwerp. By presenting the story of the Star boats, as they were known in Antwerp dialect, it commemorates a Belgo-American company that brought prestige and prosperity to its home European port from 1873 to 1934. It pays tribute to the tens of thousands of desperate migrants for whom Antwerp was a gateway to North America and Canada. And it is a detailed and sensitive study of the human story of mobility and migration.

There are around 165 nationalities in Antwerp today. One of the many roles this project adopts is to delve into the personal stories of Red Star Line passengers and people now living in the city. An old van was converted into a ‘story bus’, collecting the testimonies of 400 residents with very different accounts of how they came to the country. The museum also serves as a research facility, with records of 100,000 Belgians who emigrated. Visitors are invited to leave their own migration stories, continuing the record of how and why people leave their home country to settle in another.

About 200,000 visitors are expected each year, including Americans keen to trace their ancestry. “There’s been a growing interest in Europe in immigration, because we are confronted by lots of immigration,” said Luc Verheyen, the museum’s project coordinator. “We have tried to give immigration new meaning for a wider public, as an example of a global phenomenon.”

Pioneers and fortune-seekers

As one of the few migration museums in Europe, the Red Star Line project is an important testimony to the mass movement of people from Europe to North America during a turbulent period in history. From the beginning of the 19th century to the outbreak of World War Two, millions of people travelled through Antwerp on their way to the New World. While some were pioneers or fortune-seekers, the majority were from Eastern Europe, fleeing poverty and Jewish persecution.

The migrant story was largely forgotten and the site falling into ruin when city authorities declared the buildings a historical monument in 2001. They were given new life when the City of Antwerp launched the €18 million project in 2005, as part of the redevelopment of the Eilandje area. The most important artefact was the site itself: three derelict red-brick warehouses on the Rijnkaai, built between 1894 and 1921 as the company was required by US authorities to process all third-class passengers. Sensitive renovation combined with contemporary additions and interactive scenography have transformed the waterfront complex.

Each of the museum’s themed areas mixes personal testimonies with an extensive collection of exhibits. These include photographs, original documents such as detailed passenger lists and publicity posters painting romanticised images of the Red Star experience. Original objects, many loaned by descendants of passengers, reveal their priorities for forging a new life. They include valuable tools, a waffle iron and family-sized tart dish. Examples of luggage vary from battered suitcases to large trunks, still resplendent with their Red Star labels. Another that resonates is a rare transposing piano that belonged to composer Irving Berlin. He sailed as a five-year-old in 1893 and his tunes were later played to first-class passengers in the 1920s.

Visitors are invited to retrace emigrants’ footsteps throughout every stage of their journey, from a Warsaw ticket office to the challenge of starting a new life in the US and Canada. The journey starts in the exact building where emigrants’ belongings were deloused. It continues with the journey undertaken by many of the migrants, on crowded segregated trains.

On arrival in Antwerp they would await passage in hotels and boarding houses that catered to each nationality and ethnic group. One of the best visual testimonies of this transient population is the hundreds of drawings and sketches by Antwerp artist Eugeen Van Mieghem. His depiction of pitiful Jewish families, who had already survived violence, poverty and persecution, hints at how uncertain their future remained.

Every third-class passenger had to submit to a thorough medical and administrative check before boarding. Migrants also had to prove that they would not be a burden on the state. The authorities feared the spread of cholera and typhus and infections such as the eye disease trachoma, and if passengers failed their medical on arrival, the return fare had to be paid by the shipping line.

So emigrants were subjected to stringent showering, disinfection and medical examinations. Bathing was a supervised, hour-long ordeal in 38°C water using hot vinegar and benzene. Every member of the family needed a clean bill of health before they could travel, which resulted in heart-rending stories of lengthy and sometimes permanent separations.

Arrival at New York meant another gruelling round of medical and administrative procedures; about 2% of migrants were rejected. While Belgians travelled west to farm or moved to the Lake Michigan area to work in the growing automobile industry, Jewish immigrants largely remained in the crowded tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For third-class or steerage passengers, the 10-day voyage was frequently a distressing experience. After the company’s flagship Belgenland II was launched in 1923, it contained three segregated classes with improved facilities for migrants due to cut-throat competition from other lines for this lucrative market.

The most striking contemporary addition to the museum by American architects Beyer Blinder Belle is a vertical beacon, suggestive of a ship’s prow. It symbolically replaces the smokestack that was demolished in 1936. Climb the steps to the top for a panoramic view that includes Central Station, from where emigrants arrived, and the bend in the Scheldt from where they departed. 

www.redstarline.org

The Red Star Line

Founded in Philadelphia in the 1870s, the Red Star Line was a joint venture by an American businessman and two Belgian investors to transport grain and passengers to and from Europe. In its heyday, two liners sailed each week, carrying 1,000 to 1,500 people. The majority travelled in third class, paying the equivalent of €550 in 1895 and €2,400 by 1924. The company was an important economic stimulus for the port and a source of pride for city folk. But during World War One, migrant traffic dwindled and the company’s ships were moved to other harbours and sailed for the most part under a foreign flag. At the end of the war the company hoped traffic would pick up but in 1921 the US started curbing immigration. The growth in tourism and launch of cruises could not revive the company’s fortunes. With the Great Depression in the 1920s and stock exchange crash of 1929, emigration was halted, and in the autumn of 1934 the Red Star Line made its final voyage.

This article was first published in Newcomer Autumn, 2013