Seeking crew lists for US Lines to Havre

Dear Mr. Fernandez,

Thank you for posting your request on History Hub!

The “United States Lines” was the trade name of an organization of the United States Shipping Board (USSB). After WWII, the USSB became the US Maritime Commission and later in 1951, it became known as the Federal Maritime Board.

We searched the National Archives Catalog and located the Central Correspondence Files, 1936 - 1950 in the Records of the U.S. Maritime Commission (Record Group 178) that includes file units titled such as 704-1-1: Crew Certificates; 701-2: Crew Certificates; 109-1-18: Civil Service Status-Crews on Government Owned Ships; and 14 file units pertaining to United States Lines. We also located a series titled Ship Correspondence Files, 1936 - 1950 in Record Group 178 that may include references to the crews. For more information about these non-digitized records, please contact the National Archives at College Park - Textual Reference (RDT2) at archives2reference@nara.gov.

Next, we searched the Subject Files, 1950 - 1994 in the Records of the Federal Maritime Commission (Record Group 358) and the Subject Files, 1949 - 1977 in the Records of the Maritime Administration (Record Group 357) but were unable to locate records pertaining to the United States Lines or crews.

Due to the continued impact of COVID-19, you may experience a delay in receiving an initial acknowledgment as well as a substantive response to your reference request from RDT2.  We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your understanding and patience as we balance mission-critical work and the safety of our staff during the pandemic. Please check NARA’s web page about COVID-19 updates for the latest information.

We hope this is helpful. Best of luck with your research!