Basics on shipping records
- Getting clues to the arrival
- Categories of arrival
- New South Wales
- Victoria
- Queensland
- South Australia
- Tasmania
Getting clues to the arrival
It's important to get clues to the arrival of your ancestor to shorten your search. But also because otherwise it would be all too easy to seize upon an arrival record with the right name, but belonging to someone else!
Death certificates often show the number of years spent in the various colonies, allowing an approximate year and likely place of arrival to be deduced. Remember, however, that the colony of death is not necessarily the colony of arrival and that such information is not first-hand and the informant may have been neither diligent nor well-informed!
Other clues to the arrival may be gained from the birth certificates of children, if you can find those - obviously arrival must have occurred before the first one born in Australia, and any overseas marriage mentioned on the birth certificates.
See our full range of research guides for other records that may provide or give clues to arrival details, such as:
- musters and censuses;
- letters to the Government seeking to acquire land;
- naturalisation records;
- gaol records;
- mental asylum records; and
- hospital records.
Categories of arrival
There were basically five categories of arrival into the Australian colonies:
- Assisted immigrants - people who were sponsored here by an migration scheme
- Unassisted passengers - people who paid their own way to the colonies
- Convicts - transported for crimes committed in the ‘old country'
- Military - part of the British regiments stationed here throughout the 18th and 19th centuries
- Crew - people who worked their own way as a member of a ship's crew.
Not all categories of arrival are represented in each colony. For example, no convicts were transported to South Australia.
Official records of arrival are held by each State's archives and the National Archives of Australia. The SAG also has a fine collection of passenger lists and shipping records which have been published in microform by these institutions.
New South Wales
See State Records Archives In Brief for a good summary of shipping and arrival records for NSW.
Assisted Immigrants
The State Records website has online indexes to assisted immigrants from 1844-96.
Ancestry's Australian site has an online index to Bounty Immigrants from 1828-42.
Unassisted passengers
State Records holds an index to miscellaneous early shipping, 1792-1826 - in card and book form in its reading rooms. It also holds an index to passengers arriving (unassisted), 1826-1853 - in card form and on microfilm. State Records also has an online version of Pastkeys' index to unassisted passengers from 1842-55.
Mary Anne Warner and her band of volunteers are indexing unassisted passenger lists from 1856 onwards. An online index of their efforts to date and images of the passenger lists is here.
Microfilms of passenger lists to 1900 are widely available (39 libraries throughout NSW, including SAG, plus a number of other repositories throughout Australia) as part of State Records' Archives Resource Research Kit (ARK).
Convicts
See our separate research guide.
Military
Military personnel - and any family accompanying them - are rarely mentioned in passenger lists. Military musters and pay lists for the period covering a voyage to Australia will usually identify the ship involved, but do not include other family members who may have been aboard. Any log of the voyage that has survived may mention such people, but the chances are low.
Such military personnel as are included in passenger lists to NSW are to be found in:
- the index to passengers arriving (unassisted), 1826-1853 held by State Records
- Pastkeys' index to unassisted arrivals to NSW, 1842-55 under the heading 'Regiments' online at the State Record website.
Crew
A ship's master is usually named in newspaper reports of a ship's arrival and departure. Details of all crew are usually recorded in any official arrival and departure records that have survived. Any log or other record of the voyage that has survived may mention particular crew. About 10,000 seamen who "jumped ship" are indexed in Jim Melton's Ships' Deserters 1852-1900: Including Stragglers, Strays and Absentees from HM Ships (SAG ref: A8/35/1).
The following indexes may assist:
- Norma Tuck's index to ships' musters, 1816-1825
- Pastkeys' index to ships and masters to Sydney, 1842-1855, held on fiche by SAG.
- Mary Anne Warner's online index of unassisted passengers and crew from 1856 onwards.
Victoria
Assisted Immigrants
The Public Record Office of Victoria has its index to assisted immigrants from UK, 1839-1871 is searchable online.
Because Victoria was a part of the New South Wales colony until 1851, records of assisted immigrants arriving in Port Phillip are also held by State Records (NSW). An online index is available.
Unassisted passengers
The Public Record Office of Victoria has an online index to unassisted passengers from foreign ports 1852 to 1923.
The following indexes should also be inspected:
- Unassisted passengers arriving in Port Phillip, 1839-1851 - microfiche index compiled by Ian Hughes from newspapers, letters, diaries, etc
- Index to Passengers mentioned in the Port Phillip Herald, 1840-1846 - microfiche index compiled by Westley Button
- Index to Passengers mentioned in Melbourne's Argus, 1846-1851 - microfiche index compiled by Westley Button
Queensland
Assisted immigrants
Because Queensland was a part of the New South Wales colony until 1859, State Records (NSW) has records of assisted immigrants arriving at Moreton Bay from 1848-59. An online index is available at the State Records website.
Unassisted passengers
Copies of unassisted passenger lists and indexes for Queensland on microform are available at SAG.
South Australia
SAG holds microfiche copies of records of assisted immigrants arriving in South Australia from 1847-86.
Tasmania
SAG holds an index on microfiche of assisted immigrants arriving in Tasmania.