Date of Completion

Spring 5-1-2026

Thesis Advisor(s)

Matthew McKenzie

Honors Major

Maritime Studies

Disciplines

American Studies | History | History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Latin American History | Latin American Studies | Museum Studies | Other History | Tourism | United States History

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the Munson Steamship Line, an American steamship company founded by Captain Walter David Munson. A veteran of the American Civil War, Captain Munson visited Cuba following the war’s conclusion and became involved in Cuba’s oil and sugar industries, gradually becoming involved in the international sugar shipping trade. An 1890 innovation in shipboard technology and its impact on the Cuban American molasses trade was a moment that established a multi-generational maritime empire, officially incorporating the Munson Steamship Line shortly after the American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence and expanding throughout the Atlantic. His son, Frank C. Munson, brought this empire deeper into tourism, particularly in the Bahamas, where a racially exclusionary image of paradise was enforced upon the islands during the Prohibition era. The Line met its end during the Great Depression, where economic downturns in tourism and shipping sent the company into a decline, kept afloat by a federal mail shipping subsidy until that too was stripped away. The Munson Steamship Line leaves behind a complicated legacy, having used its economic and political power for imperial and racist ends across generations, but also indirectly funding the means for which maritime history becomes more inclusive and able to interrogate these legacies.

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