Compared to the 21st century, the prospect of a long journey that crossed an ocean was a completely different one for our ancestors 400 years ago. When the Pilgrim Fathers travelled to Massachusetts on the Mayflower in 1620, they took their lives in their hands. The ship was beset by storms that threatened to sink it, they probably suffered from scurvy, and their Atlantic crossing took 66 days. By 1936 the liner Queen Mary could cross the same ocean in just four days. Nowadays a transatlantic flight is just eight hours or so.
You may have ancestors with no obvious connection to the sea, and so may feel that you are unlikely to find evidence of them travelling abroad in the past. But you might be wrong about that. Our ancestors travelled for many reasons: to seek temporary employment abroad or manage business connections in another country; to emigrate; to visit family; as part of a diplomatic or military role; or simply because a long sea voyage was recommended by doctors for good health.
The passenger experience
Changes in ship technology improved the passenger experience greatly over the centuries. The advent of the steam engine in the 1830s meant that ships did not have to wait for a favourable wind to leave port, which had sometimes delayed passengers for weeks in the age of sail. It also meant that ships never became becalmed, and vessels could operate according to a reliable timetable for departures and arrivals. The use of steel to make the hull instead of wood enabled ships to become much bigger, so there was room on board for better accommodation and facilities such as restaurants, gyms, and shops.
Before the 1830s, a voyage was seen as a slow and tedious necessity. Nearly all ships were cargo ships, and passengers would negotiate with the owner or captain of a named ship to see if they might be carried on board. Large groups of passengers, such as the Mayflower pilgrims, might charter a ship which was hastily and crudely converted to accommodate passengers. But for the most part, small groups of passengers might seek to purchase the use of the captain’s cabin if they were wealthy, or to sleep on a spare area of a lower deck if they were not. In the early days passengers had to take everything they needed with them, including food and bedding.
Once steamships became common, there were often three or four classes of accommodation. First class was sometimes called first class saloon and usually provided a private cabin, the best menu available and freedom to roam the ship. Second class often involved smaller cabins which might need to be shared and a restricted menu. Third class and steerage were sometimes the same class or sometimes slightly different. Yet passengers in these classes typically had cramped dormitory-style accommodation and very basic food that was often described as ‘rations’. This lowest class of passenger could usually only access a small crowded part of one deck of the ship to get a little fresh air.
Passenger lists
Ship owners were required to keep lists of every passenger on board their vessels. The main surviving series of passenger lists for ships departing the UK is BT 27 at The National Archives (TNA) and this has been digitised by The Genealogist in its Immigration, Emigration and Travel record collection. It covers the years 1890 to 1960. Passenger lists were kept in the years before 1890 but were not required to be retained in the UK. They reveal passengers’ names, ages, occupation, nationality, and sometimes address, as well as the ship travelled on and its destinations. They were kept for all ships departing from UK ports whether they were British ships or not, and included passengers of all nationalities.
Although the survival rate of this record series is good, the documents do have some limitations. For example, there was no requirement to keep passenger lists for British coastal vessels that operated as local ferries. It was also not mandatory to keep them for ships that called at a single European port. So you will not find passenger lists for ships that only sailed from, say, Southampton to France, or from Scottish ports to Norway. This can be a nuisance if you have ancestors who travelled to Europe.
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TNA has other passengers lists for ships that arrived at UK ports (1870 to 1960) in series BT 26, as well as various records of foreigners arriving at UK ports. These ‘alien arrivals’ date back to the late 18th century and many of them were documented by the Home Office. You can find detail on how to access BT 26 and alien arrivals via the TNA research guide to passenger lists at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/
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Overseas sources
When looking for records of British passengers, it should not be forgotten that other countries often kept records of people arriving on their shores. So if you can’t find a passenger list in UK sources you may find details of their arrival at a foreign port. The other advantages of looking in overseas sources is that many of their websites are free to access and they often pre-date British passenger lists by several decades. The Ellis Island database of US arrivals, for example, dates as far back as 1820. Some good websites to investigate include:
There are a whole range of other online sources that may assist you. An especially useful resource is the Packrat website which lists many British travellers on ships arriving in America in the 17th century. These early resources can be hard to find in the UK so the website may be a significant shortcut for you. Several websites have collections of passenger lists from various places including The Ships List, and Cyndi’s List. It is also surprising how often you may get the passenger lists you want simply by typing the name of the ship, the year, and ‘passenger list’ into Google. Even if you don’t find what you’re looking for, your search results may identify an archive that has a copy of what you need.
Some websites specialise in a particular named ship, and are worth exploring further. A number of these are concerned with tragedies such as the Titanic, but the advantage is that they often have detailed biographies of individual passengers. Examples include:
Another very helpful source for identifying passengers on ships is newspapers. When ships docked at ‘Empire’ ports, the local newspapers would commonly report upon the first- and second-class passengers who had disembarked because relatives and friends would want to know they had arrived. Reporters were allowed to see the ship’s passenger list on arrival and hastily transcribed it for their paper. This does mean that sometimes there are transcription errors, but this practice predates the survival of many original passenger lists and so can be your only source of information. Online newspaper collections such as the Trove website for Australia (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper) or PapersPast for New Zealand (https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz) can therefore be invaluable.
Finally, shipwrecks were very common in the past, so do think about sources that deal with ship losses as a means to potentially identify passengers. For example, public inquiries into wrecks after 1876 have all been scanned and indexed by ship’s name by Southampton Maritime Archives. These inquiries commonly identify passengers who survived and who died, as well as the cause of the ship’s loss.
As usual in genealogy, you may need to play the detective to find your ancestors as there are many potential places to look.
