First Cabin Fares from New York to the British Isles, 1826–1914

Abstract

We present a continuous time series on first cabin passenger fares for ocean travel from New York to the British Isles covering nearly a century of time. We discuss the conceptual and empirical difficulties of constructing such a time series, and examine the reasons for differences between the behavior of advertised fares and those based on passenger revenues. We find that while there are conceptual differences between these two measurements, as well as differences in the average values, the two generally moved in parallel, which means that the advertised fare series can serve as a reasonable proxy for movement of the revenue-based fares. We also find that advertised fares declined over time, roughly paralleling the drop in freight rates for U.S. bulk exports, until around 1890, but thereafter increased while freight rates continued to decline. We propose several hypotheses for this divergent behavior and suggest lines of future research.

Time on the crossing: emigrant voyages across the Atlantic, 1853–1913

“…It is possible to combine three of these to form a consistent series that covers the six decades from 1853 to 1913. This is based on the series provided by Killick (2014) for voyages by sail and by Dupont et al (2017) and Keeling (2008) for voyages by steam, with additional fare quotes for the years before 1866. During the transition from sail to steam the steerage rates for the latter were considerably higher than for the former.…”

Overseas Passenger Fares and Emigration from Germany in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

“…Other researchers provide fare data for later periods, for specific years, or for cabin passengers. See Galenson (1984: 18, table 1), Dupont et al (2016), and Keeling (2012: xviii, 3).…”

“…6. This approach is supported by the work of Dupont, Keeling, and Weiss (2016) who investigate for cabin fares the relationship between the advertised fare (they use the minimum fare advertised for cabin travel) and the fare calculated based on average revenue from all cabin passengers for late in the nineteenth century. They find that both types of fares yield similar trends.…”