For the Flows summer series 2024, we are looking for stories of people from the maritime and logistics world who have a special passion or hobby. You will also get to see a weekly episode of ‘Geerts en de Schelde’, in which Marc Geerts takes us through the rich history of the port of Antwerp.
Entrepreneur Marc Geerts passed on his transport company to his three sons and has since thrown himself into his new career as a city guide in Antwerp. From there, the idea was born to create a reporting series in which he takes Flows through the rich history of the port of Antwerp.
Geerts could listen for hours to his great-grandparents’ stories about the two world wars. “My great-grandmother was born in 1896 and she still knew stories of her grandparents who had lived before Belgium’s independence,” he says. “I was enormously fascinated and gradually started looking up more and more information about this in history books. I wanted to check in that way whether those stories were true.”
Together with Marc Geerts, Flows canned the reportage series ‘Geerts en de Schelde’, which gives you an insight into the origins of the Antwerp port. In eight short episodes, Geerts looks back, in his own style, at a number of key moments in Antwerp’s history that have ensured the port evolved into the world port it is today.
Red Star Line
In the fifth episode of ‘Geerts en de Schelde’, Marc Geerts takes us to the buildings of Red Star Line in Antwerp North. Red Star Line or Société Anonyme de Navigation Belge-Américaine was a Belgian shipping company that transported more than 2 million passengers between Antwerp, New York and Philadelphia between 1873 and 1935. The ‘land movers’ arrived in Antwerp from all corners of Europe thanks to the well-connected Belgian rail network. After waiting several weeks, they then took one of Red Star Line’s 23 ships to the United States in search of a better future.
With the US Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, the number of immigrants per country was severely restricted, which eventually had a serious impact on Red Star Line’s passenger volumes and results. The 1929 stock market crash killed the shipping company and in 1935 it went bankrupt. Red Star Line’s original buildings are still on display in Antwerp and have housed the Red Star Line Museum since 2013.
Missed an episode of ‘Geerts en de Schelde’? No problem. You can watch all episodes here.
