Help searching Transatlantic Migration 1858-1870 (once logged in)
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Search the records by name and year.
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Passenger results show (where stated): Name, Occupation, Nationality, Gender, Age, Marital Status, Class, Sail date, Ship name, Destination.
Click Voyage button to view Voyage results.
Click Passenger List to view Passenger list for the voyage.
Voyage results show: Ship name, Sail date, Master, Type, Sailed from, Via port, Date via port, Destination, Arrival date, Total no. passengers, Passenger breakdown: nationality, marital status, gender and class.
Passenger list results show: Name, Age, Nationality, Ship name, Destination, Sail date.
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| Sailing and arrival dates |
During compilation, it became apparent that the Ships' Masters or their Pursers were not consistent in dating the passenger lists with either the sailing date or the arrival date. The lists may have been compiled during the voyage or after the ship had reached port and was waiting to disembark passengers. A number of the passenger lists contained no dates at all. To give some consistency to these records, 4 sources were used to correlate the sailing dates:
- New York Shipping and Commercial List, New York, NY 1858-1870
a daily newspaper
- New York Herald, New York, NY 1858-1870
a daily newspaper with a section titled ‘Shipping Intelligence'
- New York Times, New York, NY 1858-1870
a daily newspaper with a section titled ‘Shipping Intelligence'
- Quebec Gazette, Quebec, Canada 1858-1870
a daily newspaper (not always a reliable source)
There are generally 4 dates to be examined in determining a sailing date: Advertised Sailing Date, Customs Clearance Date (usually a day before the Advertised Sailing Date at least in the early years), actual Sailing Date as stated in one of the above sources and a date calculated by using the arrival date at the United Kingdom port as listed in Lloyd's List and Shipping Gazette and the normal time for the type of ship to make the passage.
The later is the least accurate, but probably within a day or two of the true date. The most questionable dates are those of the ships sailing from Canada. The sailing date was also used to determine the year of sailing. It is suggested that the researcher should not pay too much attention to the dates on the original passenger lists, but refer to the inventory of ships for the correct sailing and arrival dates. In addition there are two fragments of passenger lists that are unidentifiable: SS Hibernia (has no date but it is speculated that it sailed from Boston in 1864), the other is a loose sheet with no ship's name.
The above sources also generally provide the Master's name if it is not on the Passenger list. You will also note that the passenger lists of ships docking in Southampton are very different from the other lists and one can only assume that since most of those ships and passengers were just passing through to Bremen, Hamburg and Havre, the customs officials were not too strict.
The date of arrival for the ships is derived from Lloyd's List and Shipping Gazette. These dates may differ somewhat from the passenger lists due to the fact that Lloyd's List would be the date that the ship arrived in the port and not necessarily the date that the passengers disembarked. The intention was to establish some uniform method to determine the actual sailing time.
Generally speaking a sailing ship took about 30 days for the voyage, while a steamship took about 15 days. The steamships leaving New York for Southampton could generally make the trip in 12 to 13 days. This is very different than many books that describe the voyages to the United States as taking months.
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| Missing information |
There are eight ships that have no sailing date and the compiler did not feel comfortable in assigning a sailing date to them.
There are two ships that have no arrival date in Hamburg, although they have an arrival date in Southampton.
There are two ships listed for which there are no passenger lists available - Isaac Webb sailed from New York for Liverpool 20 November 1858 and the City of Baltimore sailed from New York for Liverpool 4 December 1858.
These two ships were listed in Police Reports along with some names of the Irish passengers who were on board. It was thought appropriate to add them to the study.
Also, one passenger list for the Bremen is dated Southampton, 2 December 1863. The Bremen did not sail until 19 December 1863 and it arrived in Southampton, 31 December 1863. There is no explanation for the date on the passenger list.
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| Passenger details |
Abbreviated Christian names such as Wm. or Patk, have been transcribed as William or Patrick. Abbreviated names that were not clearly meaningful, such as Fred. or Chris., the name was left as recorded on the passenger list.
There may be differences in the spelling of the names in the transcription when compared to the original passenger list. The spellings of the names in the newspapers are sometimes quite different from the spellings on the passenger lists. The Purser or Master who complied the passenger list wrote what he heard and spelled the name as best he could. The compiler had occasion to use some selected lists to determine faint names or names that were incomplete.
If a woman was recorded as Mrs. she was listed as a married woman while the Pursers frequently listed her as single. Frequently you will find an entry with Mr. (so and so) and Lady, who was assumed to be his wife.
Infant children were all given the age of one year rather than recording the months.
Over 11,800 of the passengers did not declare a nationality. These are mostly from the ships going into Southampton. A nationality was added to the example given as part of The Passenger Act of 1855, American. Though the returns are insignificant compared to English, Scottish and Irish it seemed appropriate to determine, because many of the children who were obviously born in the United States are listed as their parents' nationalities.
Also when comparing the original passenger lists to the transcription, do not pay too much attention to the number of passengers listed on the original lists. Generally, 1st and 2nd Class passengers were not counted in the figure shown on the passenger lists.
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| Names with apostrophes |
For names with apostrophes (eg. O'Flynn) do not leave a space after the apostrophe.
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| NameX |
NameX is a proprietary name-matching tool which allows you to find family records for names which have common variations in spelling or which may have been spelled incorrectly on some records.
Click here for more help.
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