South Australian Shipping & Migration Directory
Shipping and passenger arrival & departure resources
Introduction to SA shipping passenger lists
This directory of SA shipping and migration resources covers the 19th and early 20th centuries. There are surviving official passenger lists for some voyages — Nominal Lists prepared by emigration agents, Certificates of Departure, Certificates of Arrival, and the passenger lists sometimes transcribed onto the cargo manifests.
Many official records have been lost, so other sources are required. The original applications to migration agents for assisted passage were destroyed after transcription into a consolidated register (some information omitted). Newspaper Shipping Intelligence columns are a valuable but error prone source. Others include the (Royal) Adelaide Hospital and Destitute Asylum admission registers and various reports of the sick and destitute. Passenger diaries and letters may give a list of passengers or at least mention some other passengers by name. Newspaper obituaries often include migration information, as do cemetery headstone inscriptions. Births at sea were sometimes registered on arrival, the certificate giving the birth place as the named ship.
South Australian shipping resources
- Colonial South Australian Pioneers [combined database of arrivals, births, marriages & deaths]
- Diary of the SS Roon voyage to SA arriving June 1912
- Ship deserters in the Persons lost & found database
Emigration from the present-day Lubuskaland to [South] Australia in the 19th century
Immigrants from Cambridgeshire
Migrant Ships Arriving in South Australia 1836-60
Pioneer ships to arrive in South Australia 1836
Pioneers Association of SA — ships 1836-45
South Australian Immigrants from the UK 1847-66, and Germany 1837-62
South Australian Maritime Museum
South Australian Migration Museum
South Australian Passenger Lists 1836-53
South Australian shipping index [19th century — selected passenger lists]
State Library of South Australia
- Immigration to South Australia [arrivals & departures]
- Horner Index to overseas departures from South Australia 1836-87
- Applications and nominations for assisted passage — 19th century
- Passenger lists — incoming
- Search passenger lists 1845-86 [GRG 35/48/1 only — database frequently does not work]
- Enter the ship reference number 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 emigrant passenger list to arrive in 1863. You can also use this form to search for the reference number(s) associated with a ship name. The only ships included are those from GRG 56/68/5 & 35/48/1.
- Passenger lists — outgoing
Whaling in South Australia's early days [includes the names of whalers and whaling companies]
Australian shipping resources with SA information
Australian National Maritime Museum
Emigrants [lookup resources only]
Irish famine orphan girl ships to Australia
National Archives of Australia — Family History National Library of Australia — Digitised Newspapers [searchable (within OCR limitations), including passenger lists]
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] [pay site]
Highlands and Islands Emigration Society [passengers leaving Scotland 1852-57]
Old Lutheran emigration around the middle of the 19th century
UK Incoming Passenger Lists 1878 to 1960 [from SA and elsewhere] [pay site]