South Australian Shipping & Migration Directory
Shipping and passenger arrival & departure resources
Introduction to SA shipping passenger lists
This comprehensive directory of SA shipping and migration resources covers the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some voyages have surviving official passenger lists - Nominal Lists prepared by emigration agents, Certificates of Departure, Certificates of Arrival, and the semi-official passenger lists sometimes transcribed onto the cargo manifests. The applications for assisted passage to migration agents were primary sources with very useful details, but they have been destroyed. These records were transcibed into a consolidated register of applications that is equally useful.
However, many official records have been lost, so other sources are required. The most important are those found in newspaper Shipping Intelligence 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 birth place as the named ship. Some of these sources are included in the resources listed below, whilst others are not yet published on the internet.
South Australian shipping resources
- Colonial South Australian Pioneers [combined database of passenger arrivals, births, marriages & burials]
- Diary of the SS Roon voyage to SA arriving June 1912
- Ship deserters in the Persons lost & found database [only those named in SA Government and Police Gazettes]
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]
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 1847-60, and Germany 1837-55
South Australian Maritime Museum
South Australian Migration Museum
South Australian Passenger Lists 1836-51
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
- Applications and nominations for assisted passage - 19th century
- Passenger lists - incoming
- Search passenger lists 1845-86 [GRG 35/48/1 only]
- After finding the ship reference number from State Records, enter it into the search form below to find the corresponding ship name. For example, enter the ship reference 63/4 to find the name of the 4th ship with surviving passenger list to arrive in 1863. You can also use this form to search for the reference number(s) associated with a ship name. Note that the only ships included are those from GRG 56/68/5 & 35/48/1. Each search result includes reference number, ship name, arrival date, and departure port (if known).
- Passenger lists - outgoing
Australian shipping resources with SA information
AUSNZ Passenger Lists [lookup resources & links only]
Australian National Maritime Museum
Ozships - Australian shipping 1788-1968
Tasmanian departures 1817-67 [passengers to SA and elsewhere]
Worldwide shipping resources with SA information
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] [pay site]