Skip to main content
Naval History and Heritage Command

Naval History and Heritage Command

Text Image Header Default Picture
Description

Cruise Books

ABOUT

Cruise books, usually similar in general content and format to high school or college yearbooks, are not official publications. They are compiled by the officers and enlisted personnel of a ship, unit, or station for private distribution. Like school yearbooks, they are usually paid for by subscription from crewmembers or from proceeds of the ship's store. The Navy does not stock or sell copies of cruise books.

AVAILABILITY

A ship, unit, or station may frequently keep a set of its own cruise books. For a list of World War II cruise books, and libraries that they can be examined at, see: Mawdsley, Dean L. Cruise Books of the United States Navy in World War II: A Bibliography, Washington: Naval Historical Center, 1993. Other collections of Navy cruise books can be found at the New York Public Library and the library of the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

The NDL World War II Cruise Book Collection is only available for research use inside of the Library. While Reference Librarians can confirm whether we hold a cruise book in our collection and provide limited photocopying of portions of a book for personal use, cruise books are copyrighted works, and the Library is unable to duplicate entire works. 

Some cruise books might be available through other sources, including online genealogical websites, cruise book publishers, or through used book retailers.  Information concerning copyright policies can be found on our command’s ‘Scanning, Copyright & Citation Information’ page.

If you are unable to locate a specific cruise book here, then you can check The Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy and the San Francisco Maritime NPS site in California.  

If you are interested in donating a cruise book to our collection, please read our Donations page. 

Published: Thu Apr 29 15:35:56 EDT 2021