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| Merlin, the old sea dog researching a Captain's log |
This site contains a large amount of shipping details, either transcribed by myself, or contributed by others. Although all care has been taken in the preparation of the data, there will always be errors, due to problems with the source material being hard to read and open to interpretation, or errors in transcription. Wherever possible, the user chould confirm the details with the source material.
These pages are intended to help answer some of the more common questions that are asked about the information, what the pages contain, as well as how to use the information.
The central part of this site consists of a series of files containing details of events. These contain arrival and departure information, as well as background and passenger lists, if available. Each event may record the complete details of a trip (such as departure and arrival information), or just the information about the departure or arrival, in which case there may be a second related event entry.
To help find the information, there are a series of indexes to help locate the information you are trying to locate. These are:
| Vessel arrivals and departures | |
| Passenger lists by vessel | |
| Diaries and reports | |
| Shipwrecks |
There are two main sources for the information on this site; historical newspapers and state and national archive material. Both of these sources are used in compiling the data and both have occasional differences between the information recorded. There are also occasional sources from books. See the bibliography for details of the source material.
Each event has a field called "Source" which provides details of where the information came from. Note that this will be different for each event, some will be sourced from newspapers, some from archive material and some may be from both.
The information found here is nowhere near complete. By the 1840's, Sydney was handling 300 to 500 coastal and foreign shipping movements a month and Melbourne was handling 100 to 200. This grew in the 1850's so that Melbourne was handling more shipping than Sydney, especially during early the gold-rush period. So by the mid 1850's, there were over 20,000 shipping movements per year for Australian ports. Although there are a significant number of entries found here, it is just a small fraction of the total from 1788 to 1968.
The correctness of the information may also be hard to determine. The major sources used are newspapers and archive records. For each event, there is a field called "Source". This lists all of the sources used to create the event details. In theory, the more sources used, the more accurate the information should be. In practice, this is not the case. Most newspapers plagurised their shipping information from other newspapers, so that at best the large number of sources will tend to reduce the number of transcription errors, but is no guarantee of the accuracy of the original material.
See the section below for details on the problems with individual fields and the correctness of the information.
The infromation available for one entry to the next depends on the amount of detail provided by the source material. In some cases, this might be little more than the name of the vessel, through to complete passenger lists and background information for the trip, passengers and vessel. In almost all cases, the information for any event is held in one place, with the exception of diaries, which may be held separately.
Each event may be made up of several sections:
| Trip details |
| Vessel details |
| Background information |
| Passenger/crew list |
The "Background information" and "Passenger/crew list" sections will only be present if the information was available from the source material used. Note that this does not mean that information is not available, just that it was not present in the source material used. Below is a detailed description of each section.
The "Trip details" is the first part of an event entry and contains basic information about the trip. There are four main sections:
| Trip | The type of event. This lists the name and type of vessel, as well as what type of
event (see below) example: "Arrival of the ship Neptune". the following types of events are recorded: | |
| Arrival | ||
| Departure | ||
| Loading | ||
| Discharging | ||
| Shipwreck | ||
| Advertisement | ||
| Clearance | ||
| Report | ||
| Purchase | ||
| Observed | ||
| Expected | ||
| Background | ||
| Both arrive and depart | ||
| Projected departure | ||
| Origin | The details of where the vessel originated was available example: "from Downs 20th Dec 1817" | |
| Destination | The details of where the vessel arrived was available example: "to Sydney 5th May 1818" | |
| Other detail | Other information about the trip example: "via Cape of Good Hope" | |
The "Vessel details" contains details about the vessel and sometimes cargo or related information for the trip. The number of entries in this section may vary from event to event and the values may also differ between events, due to errors in the source material. The common sections are:
| Name | The name of the vessel | ||
| Type | The type of vessel. the following types are used: | ||
| Unknown | |||
| Cutter | |||
| Coaster | actually the type of trade, not vessel | ||
| Schooner | |||
| Ship | |||
| Barque | |||
| Brig | |||
| Sloop | |||
| Corvette | |||
| Frigate | |||
| Brigantine | |||
| Steamer | |||
| Steam packet | |||
| Clipper brig | |||
| Packet brig | |||
| Yacht | |||
| Ketch | |||
| Hulk | |||
| Clipper ship | |||
| Steam frigate | |||
| Packet schooner | |||
| Steam sloop | |||
| Barge | |||
| Yawl | |||
| Cruiser | |||
| Dredge | |||
| Launch | |||
| Clipper barque | |||
| Armed tender | |||
| Clipper | |||
| Lighter | |||
| Master | The name of the vessel's master (Captain) | ||
| Weight | The weight of the vessel in tons. Note that the value is prone to error. The harbour dues were based on the weight of the vessel, making under-reporting advantageous to the owner or master, while overstating the size made the vessel more attractive to passengers. Transcription errors can also occur with "3" and "8" being confused, as well as "5" and "6", "4" and "7", "1" and "4" and "6", "9" and "0", all due to unclear material. | ||
| Guns | The number of guns that the vessel carried. Note that many vessels carried cannon to defend themselves against pirates; not just vessels belonging to navies. | ||
| Cargo/other | Details of cargo carried, or other related information. | ||
In this section, any background information about the vessel, crew, passengers or trip is located. Most of these reports come from the newspapers of the time and many include first hand accounts of events that occured. Although these stories are fascinating, the user should be aware that in many cases the details of these stories are difficult to substantiate.
The source field contains details of where the information originated. There is a source field for each event and each passenger. Occasionally there will also be a source field relating to the background information.
The contents for the source field for the background information usually contains all of the details. The event and passenger fields use codes to identify the source. The format of each entry is: "pp1:ee1,ee2,ee3, pp2:ee4" Where "pp1" and "pp2" are source documents and "ee1" to "ee4" are editions. For example: "tsg:1,3,4, mwc:44" would indicate that the sources are "The Shipping Gazette", editions 1,3 and 4 and the "Melbourne Weekly Courier", edition 44. The table below lists many of the sources used:
| aic | Adelaide Independent and Cabinet of Amusement |
| ao:696 | NSW Records: Principal Superintendent of Convicts: Printed Indents 1831 (X633) |
| ao:697 | NSW Records: Principal Superintendent of Convicts: Printed Indents 1831 (X633) |
| ao:744 | NSW Records: Principal Superintendent of Convicts: Convicts Indents (X642a) |
| ao:1263 | NSW Records: Colonial Secretary: Reports of vessels arrived July 1826 - 1831 |
| ao:1264 | NSW Records: Colonial Secretary: Reports of vessels arrived 1833 |
| ao:1266 | NSW Records: Colonial Secretary: Reports of Vessels Arrived, 1838 - Dec 1839 |
| ao:2425 | NSW Records: Musters and other papers relating to convict ships, 1790-1849 (AONSW ref 2/8271 p.323) |
| arg | The Melbourne Argus |
| bct | The Bibliography of Convict Transports, James Hugh Donohoe |
| cja | Commercial Journal and Advertiser |
| eml | e-mails from various contributors |
| fpc | Free Press and Commecial Journal |
| gea | Geelong Advertiser |
| log | Log books from vessels |
| mwc | The Melbourne Weekly Courier |
| naa | National Archives of Australia online database |
| nsr | NSW Records (4/5195 or 4/5196). Arrival indexes |
| ppm | Port Phillip Monthly |
| qsa | Queensland State Archives |
| ref | Books or periodicals |
| sad | Shipping Arrival and Departures Victorian Ports, Martin Symes |
| san | South Australian News |
| sar | South Australian Register |
| sasr | South Australia State Records |
| saw | State Archives or Western Australia |
| sg | The Sydney Gazette (see also syg) |
| sh | The Sydney Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald |
| syg | The Sydney Gazette (see also sg) |
| tal | Tasmanian State Library |
| tcm | The Colonial Magazine and Commercial Maritime Journal |
| tco | The Colonial Observer |
| tgb | The Green Brook, Ken J Hancock |
| tlc | The Launceston Courier |
| tmc | The Melbourne Courier |
| tmt | The Melbourne Times |
| tsg | The Shipping Gazette and Sydney General Trade List |
| tta | The Teetotal Advocate |
| vth | The VDL Temperance Herald |
The database reference is a unique reference to the event on the Convictions database and is used for tracking down problems. If you have a problem with a particular event, this reference should be quoted so that the problem can be located. The reference is not used in any official records.
The "Passenger/crew list" section of the event record contains details of passengers and crew that have been identified as having travelled on the vessel.
| Surname | The family name of the person. See Can't find a passenger or passenger list for problems in trying to find people. |
| First | The first name of the person, if known. |
| Title | The title of the person, Mr, Mrs, Reverend, Captain, etc. |
| Notes | Notes about the person or details of problems with the entry. |
| Type | The type of passenger. This field will indicate whether the person was a convict or crew. Another category is for military personnel or merchant captains (it is dificult to separate a ship's captain from an army captain). |
| Age | The age of the person at the time of the voyage |
| Occupation | The occupation that the person was typically engaged in at the time of the voyage. |
| Place | The person's nationality, place of birth or place of residence at the time of the voyage. Note that for convicts, this could also be the place of their trial. |
| Contract | The person's ticket price, or in the case of convicts, their sentence. |
| Source | Details of the source material used to build the entry. See Source above for more information. |
Although there are a large number of passengers and passenger lists found here, it is only a small fraction of the total number of passenger lists available for the period covered. Currently almost all of the passengers listed are from the 19th Century, which appears to be the period of most interest. If you find a vessel and look at the details to find that there isn't a passenger list, then it won't be found anywhere else here. This does not mean that there isn't a passenger list available from other sources.
This problem can be worse when it comes to passenger's names. Depending on the year, type of vessel, type of passenger and the source material used, the person may not be included in the passenger list at all. This is most common for steerage passengers in the newspapers, for example, where steerage passengers were often given as a total number, or ignored completeley.
The spelling of a passenger's name may also be wrong, as many people were not overly literate and for those that were, there were many who could not spell. Also, some of the passenger lists are compiled by clerks or ship's officers and the passenger would say their name and the clerk would write what they heard, resulting in many differences in spelling based on differences in dialects and mother tongue.
Some common differences in spelling inlude:
| Adding an "e" to the end of a name, or leaving it off: eg "Smith" and "Smithe" |
| Swapping the letters "a", "e", "i", "o" and "u": eg "Catherine" and "Catharine" |
| Leaving out "quiet" letters: eg "Johnson" and "Johnston" |
| Similar sounding groups of letters such as "or" and "au" or "aul": eg "Cordwell" and "Caudwell" or Cauldwell |
| Swapping "f" for "ph" and vice verca: eg "Phillip" and "Filip" |
| Including or leaving out a double letter: eg "Larsson" and "Larson" |
| Swapping "y" and "i": eg "White" and "Whyte" |
| Angliclanising names: eg "Johansson" to "Johnston" and "Schmidt" to "Smith" |
There is also the possibility that the entries havn't been transcribed properly, so if you don't find the person you are after, it may be worth changing the spelling.
If the person you are looking for is a convict, there are a number of indexes available to help you locate details about their arrival. These resources are not generally available on-line. However, these indexes are available in printed form and on microfiche/microfilm as part of the NSW Records' Genealogical kit and may be found in many locations around NSW and Australia, several in New Zealand and it is also available, to varying degrees, at Church of Latter Day Saints Family History Centres around the world.
For those immigrants who were not able to avail themselves of an all-expenses paid around the world tour at the expense of the British Government, there were two main types of passengers; "assisted" and "un-assisted". Currently, there are few locations where unassisted passengers are indexed and most of those that do exist are based on index cards and are incomplete. These are normally available only at the relevant archive authority.
For assisted immigrants, several archive authorities have indexes of the passengers. These are fairly complete and are the best source to locate passengers if you don't know the vessel they arrived on. The New South Wales Records Office and the Public Records Office of Victoria have many of these records on-line. The NSW records also include the earlier Brisbane arrivals. See the section on NSW Records for more information. For Victorian arrivals, go to thier site and look for the indexes.
This list is nowhere near a complete list of shipping in Australia during the colonial period. By the early 1840's, Sydney alone was seeing the arrival and departure of several hundred vessels a month. Although this list is a quick way to do a seach, you will still need to refer to other sources if you do not find what you are looking for in these pages.
This list contains almost all of the convict ships, as well as most of the ships that arrived in Sydney before 1825 where passengers were known to be on board. However, many ships in this period would have carried passengers and the records have either been lost, or there were no records in the first place.
Also included are many of the vessels that have passenger or other documentation at the NSW Archives Office and the Queensland State Archives.
The quickest way to find vessels not listed here is to look in the 'Shipping Arrivals' books, found in many libraries. There have been books published up until 1845 for Sydney and later for Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
One area that is particularly difficult for researchers is the coastal movement of people, as many of these are not listed in official records. For these types of records, the best place to look is in the 'Shipping Intelligence' columns of the newspapers of the time. These often list the saloon passengers and occasionally will also list those in steerage.
Before you ask for assistance, please read through these help pages first. In general, I do not have much more information on the ships that are listed here. In particular, I do not have any additional passenger lists that are not listed here, nor do I have easy access to the Archive microfilms.
Keep in mind that I am not an expert on ships or shipping and that I am willing to help, but my knowledge is based on learning from pulling all of this information together. If you are still stuck and think that I may be able to help, please feel free to contact me.
Peter