South Australian Shipping & Migration Directory

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.