South Australian Shipping & Migration Directory

Shipping and passenger arrival & departure resources

This comprehensive directory of SA shipping and migration resources covers the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some voyages have surviving official passenger lists - the Nominal Lists prepared by emigration agents, Certificates of Departure, Certificates of Arrival, and/or the semi-official passenger lists sometimes transcribed onto the cargo manifests. The applications for assisted passage to migration agents are primary sources with very useful details.

However, many official records have been lost, so other sources are required. The most important are those found in newspaper shipping columns. Other sources include the (Royal) Adelaide Hospital and Destitute Asylum admission registers and various reports of the sick and destitute. Passenger diaries sometimes give a list of passengers. Newspaper obituaries often include migration details, as do cemetery headstone inscriptions. Births at sea were sometimes registered on arrival, the certificate giving the place of birth as the named ship. Some of these sources are included in the resources listed below, whilst others are not yet published on the internet, so can only be accessed at appropriate repositories.

Database of South Australian shipping passenger lists 1803-52+ [searchable] Emigration from the present-day Lubuskaland to [South] Australia in the 19th century
Immigrants from Cambridgeshire
Irish famine orphan girl ships to Australia - SA
Migrant Ships Arriving in South Australia 1836-60
National Library of Australia - Australian Newspapers
o The South Australian Advertiser 1858-61 [digitised, searchable, including passenger lists]

Passenger lists - Bremen to Adelaide 1920-39 Pioneer ships to arrive in South Australia 1836
Pioneers Association of SA - ships 1836-45
South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society shipping arrivals 1836-86
South Australian Immigrants from the UK 1847-57, and Germany 1837-51
South Australian Maritime Museum
South Australian Migration Museum
South Australian Passenger Lists 1836-51, and 1852+
South Australian shipping index [19th century - selected passenger lists]
State Library of South Australia - shipping and passenger records [arrivals & departures]
State Records of South Australia Whaling in South Australia's early days [includes the names of whalers and whaling companies]

Australian shipping & migration with South Australian information

AUS-IMMIGRATION-SHIPS Mailing List
Australian National Maritime Museum
Ozships - Australian shipping 1788-1968
Tasmanian departures 1817-67

Worldwide shipping & migration with useful SA information

Ancestors on board [Passengers leaving the British Isles 1890-1960]
Hamburger Passagierlisten 1850-1934 [at ancestry.de in German]
Highlands and Islands Emigration Society [Passengers leaving Scotland 1852-57]
Old Lutheran emigration around the middle of the 19th century
Register of ships [transcribed from the Lloyd's Register]
UK Incoming Passenger Lists 1878 to 1960 [from SA and elsewhere]
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