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Ships’ passenger lists
were drawn up by shipping companies to identify
passengers on particular voyages. The information
contained in passenger lists varies, depending
on the recording habits
of the company involved. Tracking down passenger
lists for specific voyages or the names of individual
passengers can involve time-consuming and painstaking
research. In terms of ease of access, the whereabouts
of a particular passenger list should be sought
primarily from the relevant record office in the
country of arrival. Very few passenger lists
survive in Scotland.
Tracking down the list
or ‘manifest’ handed in to the port authority
at the country of arrival is your best chance
of locating a passenger list. For vessels arriving
in countries outside the UK you should check the
relevant record office in the country concerned.
Details on those in North America, Australia,
and New Zealand are given in the answers to Frequently
Asked Questions below. For vessels arriving in
the UK from non-European ports, the Public Record
Office (PRO) in London holds passenger lists for
the period 1878-1960. The
PRO also holds passenger lists for vessels leaving
the UK for destinations outside Europe for
the period 1890-1960. They are not indexed,
many are in a fragile condition, and require a
lot of research time.
What to do now
The text above is a summary
of a longer article on passenger lists in the
SCAN Knowledge Base. You can read this by clicking
here.
The Knowledge Base also contains answers to Frequently
Asked Questions. Click on one of these for an
answer compiled by Scotland's archivists, or click
on the Knowledge Base for a wider selection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where will
I find the passenger list for someone who emigrated
to:
1.
America?
2.
Canada?
3.
Australia?
4.
New Zealand?
To enter the Knowledge Base click
here.
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