May 31, 2025

Footage of Winston Churchill’s 1929 Visit to the United States Now Online

In 1929, Winston Churchill and his brother Jack made an extended tour of North America in the company of their sons Randolph and Johnny. The Imperial War Museum has now made available a fifteen-minute film of the visit made by Jack Churchill while the family traveled in the northeastern United States. To view the silent movie, please CLICK HERE.

The four Churchill men departed Britain in summer 1929, soon after Winston had left office as Chancellor of the Exchequer following the defeat of the Conservatives in that year’s general election. The party first arrived in Canada and traversed the nation in a private railway car from east to west. From British Columbia, the Churchills entered the United States by way of a ferry to Seattle. They then moved down the Pacific coast of America stopping in San Francisco, San Simeon, and Los Angeles before going east, visiting Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and Chicago along the way before reaching New York City.

Jack Churchill probably purchased his motion-picture camera in New York, since this is where the film record begins. Winston is seen only briefly, along with Randolph, visiting the home of his cousin Frederick Guest. Various famous sites of New York are seen, including Central Park, but probably most spectacular is a view from the ground of a US airship passing over the city. At another point, the exterior of the New York Stock Exchange is shown on 18 October, less than one week before the Great Crash.

The Churchills also visited Washington, D.C., and scenes include the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue as well as the capitol dome. Of more interest to Churchill, however, was his visits to the US Civil War battlefields. Several historical locations around Richmond, Virginia are seen, but the Churchills also visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and even the works at Bethlehem Steel. In the final scenes, the Churchills are departing a misty New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty on the S.S. Berengaria, a German-built passenger ship larger that the Titanic, which was taken by Britain after the First World War as reparations for the loss of the Lusitania.