About Bill Miller ... "Mr. Ocean Liner"

Bill Miller is an international authority on the subject of ocean liners & cruise ships. This includes those great ships of the past, those “floating palaces,” as well as the current generation of cruise ships, the “floating resorts”. Called “Mr. Ocean Liner,” he has written over 100 books on the subject: from early steamers, immigrant ships and liners at war to other titles on their fabulous interiors, in post card form and about the highly collectible artifacts from them. He has done specific histories of such celebrated passenger ships as the United States, Queen Mary, Rotterdam, France, Queen Elizabeth 2, Costa Victoria, Super Star Leo and Crystal Serenity.

In all, he has also written over 1,000 articles for newspapers, magazines and nautical journals & newsletters. He even had his very own ocean liner quarterly, the Millergram. He has made nearly 400 voyages to date: Atlantic crossings, tropical cruises, coastal runs and even trips on container cargo ships and exotic banana boats. He has appeared in some three dozen video & television series, both in the USA, Britain, Europe and Australia, including Castles of the Sea, The Floating Palaces, The Superliners, Inside the World of a Cruise Ship, Disasters at Sea, Deco: Age of Glamour, The 1930s in Color and Lady in Waiting: The Story of the SS United States. He has also appeared on The Today Show, CBS Evening News, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, NBC Evening News and many other news broadcasts. He has been guest lecturer aboard over 50 different liners, sailing with the likes of Crystal Cruises, Cunard, Carnival, Holland America, Princess, Radisson-Seven Seas, Saga Cruises, Silversea, Seabourn, Viking Ocean and others. Miller was a public school teacher, in middle school and for social studies, for 32 years. He was named “Teacher of the Year” in 2002.

A native of Hoboken, New Jersey, the once busy port just across the Hudson River from New York City, Miller was named Outstanding American Maritime Scholar in 1994, received the United States Maritime Preservation Award and also the Ocean Liner Council’s Silver Riband Award, both in 2004. He received the Steamship Historical Society of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 and the Light Keeper's Award for Maritime History from the National Lighthouse Museum in 2022. Also, he has been chairman of the Port of New York Branch of the World Ship Society, serves on the selection committee for the American Maritime Hall of Fame, created the passenger ship database for the Ellis Island Museum and currently serves as Curator of 20th Century Maritime History at Manhattan’s South Street Seaport Museum. He has also organized a 14-week college course on liners, and helped to create & then served as historian at the US Merchant Marine Museum. Miller was co-host in 2011 for Ocean Liners in the Movies at New York City’s Lincoln Center. His private collection includes 4,000 books on ships, over 15,000 photos and some 1,200 miniature ship models, most of them being passenger ships.

By 2022, Miller had no less than 8 new books in the works, was curator to Decodence (an exhibit at the South St Seaport in Manhattan on the design & décor of the grand, 1930s French liner Normandie) and himself was the subject (in 2010) of a one-hour film documentary aptly titled Mr. Ocean Liner.