Passenger Lists statistics and graphs

Now that the Passenger Lists are a complete set we’ve been looking at trends and patterns in the long-distance movement of people by ship from the UK.

The overall number of passengers travelling for each 5-year period from 1890-1960 can be viewed below. Please note that the last bar is actually a six- rather than a five-year period (i.e. 1955-1960 inclusive).

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The number of passengers travelling to the five most popular destinations, USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, on the Passenger Lists can be seen here:

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Below is a graph showing the movement of passengers from the UK to the United States of America. It is worth noting that after WW1 and the Russian Revolution the USA looked to restrict immigration – the 1921 Quota Act restricted it to 3% of its foreign-born population of 1903 and the 1924 Quota Act to 2% of its 1890 population. This reduced its availablility as a destination for UK emigrants.

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This graph is for passengers travelling to Canada:

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Passengers travelling to Australia:

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Passengers travelling to South Africa:

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Passengers travelling to New Zealand:

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Passenger Lists now complete with launch of the final decade

Search for ancestors from 1890-1960

The last decade of the Passenger Lists has now been added, allowing you to search from 1890 all the way up to 1960, for ancestors leaving the UK. There are now more than 24 million passengers, across 164,000 exclusive passenger lists.

The 1950s – Elvis, Egypt and Emigration

The 1950s is often seen as a conservative period, in relation to the more radical 60s. Despite this it saw the birth of the teenager, with Rock ‘n’ Roll music emerging from America, the ‘Beat’ writers and the seeds of the Civil Rights movement. The intensifying Cold War between the USA and the USSR was played out in a race for Space: by the decade’s end Sputnik I had been launched.

Britain’s prestige was dealt a blow with the Suez Crisis, in 1956. Rationing was slowly ending, National Service was in place, wide-scale rebuilding after the devastations of World War Two were bearing fruit and thousands of ‘Ten Pound Poms’ took the opportunity to start afresh in Australia. Commercial sea travel was in its last days, with air travel becoming more affordable and prevalent from the 1960s on.

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Notable passengers on board in the 1950s

There are lots of famous faces and notable names in the final decade of the Passenger Lists. One of Hollywood’s greatest stars, Gregory Peck, can be seen aboard the Queen Elizabeth in 1950:

Matt Busby, the manager of Manchester United for many years can be found travelling with his team in May 1950, where Manchester United undertook their first tour of the States. Busby, whose tragic ‘Busby Babes’ died in the Munich Air Disaster in 1958, led the club to success in the European Cup in 1968.

Other notable passengers in the 1950s include Max Factor, Gloria Swanson, Cecil Beaton, Jack Buchanan and Bill Haley.

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Find your ancestors in the Passenger Lists

Search by person or by ship name alone. You can now also narrow your search with the name of a travelling companion. A comprehensive guide to searching the passenger lists can be viewed here

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Our premium Explorer Subscription offers you unlimited access to over 500 million records on findmypast, including the passenger lists, and costs £89.95 for 12 months – the equivalent of just £7.50 a month. The Voyager Subscription gives you 30 days’ unlimited searching of all the Passenger Lists for only £14.95. You can also view the Passenger Lists on a pay-per-view basis. It costs 10 units to view a transcription and 30 units to view, print and save the full-colour digital images.

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New decade added to the Passenger Lists 1940 to 1949

Findmypast.com has added another decade of records to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists currently available. Records now include 20 million names within 137,000 passenger lists spanning 1890 to 1949.

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1940s – Horrors, Hitler and the aftermath

The first half of the 1940s was one of the darkest periods in history, with global war causing millions of casualties and the horrors of the Holocaust. Buoyed by the USA’s entry following the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Allies eventually secured victory in Europe. Victory in Japan came only after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Following Armistice the world looked once again to rebuild: the ‘Iron Curtain’ descended in the East leading to the beginnings of the Cold War. Thousands of women left their families and homes to start a new life in Canada, America and Australia with the soldiers they had met and married. ‘Home Children’ were sent away to Canada for a better life, with mixed results. Commercial travel increased, as did the possibility of travelling for business, to compete in sports and other events.

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Notable passengers on board in the 1940s

One man whose influence on the decade cannot be overestimated appears in the passenger lists, travelling to America in 1946. Winston Churchill M P, following defeat in the 1945 election as the nation looked toward the social reforms of Attlee’s Labour Party, can be seen with his wife, valet and maid on board the Queen Elizabeth:

The American film star Spencer Tracy may be seen on the Queen Mary:

Whilst the famous sculptor Henry Moore can be found travelling to New York:

Other notable names include Walt Disney, Elia Kazan, Benjamin Britten and Joan Fontaine.

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Find your ancestors in the Passenger Lists

Search by person or by ship name alone. You can now also narrow your search with the name of a travelling companion. A comprehensive guide to searching the passenger lists can be viewed here.

Start Searching Now

Our premium Explorer Subscription offers you unlimited access to over 500 million records on findmypast, including the passenger lists, and costs £89.95 for 12 months – the equivalent of just £7.50 a month. The Voyager Subscription gives you 30 days’ unlimited searching of all the Passenger Lists for only £14.95.
You can also view the Passenger Lists on a pay-per-view basis. It costs 10 units to view a transcription and 30 units to view, print and save the full-colour digital images.

Search the Passenger Lists now

Domestics in the Passenger Lists

The Passenger Lists on ancestorsonboard.com allow you exclusive access to records which help to fill in the blanks in your family tree, to trace ancestors emigrating to start a new life and moving around for work.

Just as importantly, the Passenger Lists can also provide a fascinating insight into the way that your ancestors lived their day to day lives.

One trend, particularly in the Passenger Lists from 1890 – 1910 is the presence of domestic servants, valets and maids travelling with individuals or families.

These domestics were often noted down simply as, for example, ‘Mrs Cooper’s servant’ or tagged on to the end of a list of the family e.g. ‘and maid’.

The anonymity of the servant classes did have some benefits however.

Whilst their being noted on the Passenger Lists as simply someone’s valet or manservant doesn’t help their descendants looking for their records, they were often able to travel first class, a luxury they would never have been afforded on their own steam.

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New decade added to the Passenger lists – 1930-1939

Findmypast.com has added another decade of records to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists currently available. Records now include 18.4 million names within 125,000 passenger lists spanning 1890 to 1939.

The 1930s – an era of depression and despots

The 1930s were a decade that began with the Great Depression, in the wake of the Wall Street Crash, and ended in war. The global economic crisis saw the rise of extreme politics, the birth of fascism and the end of the prosperity and liberalism of the previous decade.

People were still travelling for work, and pleasure, but from 1933 the rise to power of Hitler saw thousands of people beginning to flee the Nazi regime. These migrants weren’t offered a great deal of help; Canada, for example, claimed that it could offer entry only to “certain classes of agriculturalists’, whilst Australia proclaimed that it would be unfair to give one class of non-British subjects preferential treatment.

Notable passengers on board in the 1930s

A great many recognisable figures from sport, entertainment and the arts can be found in the 1930s passenger lists.
Arthur “Harpo” Marx can be seen travelling to New York in 1931

Whilst the British tennis legend Fred Perry is found aboard the Queen Mary in 1937

Other notable passengers include Laurel and Hardy, Somerset Maugham, Bob Hope, Cecil Beaton and Helen Keller.
A key figure in the 1930s was the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal helped to pull the States out of Depression. His son, Franklin Delano Jr. can also be found

Find your ancestors in the Passenger Lists

Search by person or by ship name alone. You can now also narrow your search with the name of a travelling companion. A comprehensive guide to searching the passenger lists can be viewed here.

Start Searching Now

Our premium Explorer Subscription offers you unlimited access to over 500 million records on findmypast, including the passenger lists, and costs £89.95 for 12 months – the equivalent of just £7.50 a month. The Voyager Subscription gives you 30 days’ unlimited searching of all the Passenger Lists for only £14.95.

You can also view the Passenger Lists on a pay-per-view basis. It costs 10 units to view a transcription and 30 units to view, print and save the full-colour digital images.

Search the Passenger Lists now.

Children of the Empire

Find the Empire’s Children in your family tree

Starting on Monday 2 July at 9pm a new six-part Channel 4 television programme called Empire’s Children will be examining the Imperial backgrounds of six British celebrities, including Dame Diana Rigg, David Steel, Jenny Eclair, Chris Bisson, Shobna Gulati and Adrian Lester. The programme will be looking at the last days of the British Empire and the impact that it had upon modern Britain.

Imperial records on findmypast.com

With findmypast.com you can investigate your own connections to the Empire and discover ones that you didn’t even know existed. The exclusive Passenger Lists on ancestorsonboard.com currently cover every long-haul journey leaving the UK from 1890-1929 and include nearly 16 million names, detailing journeys to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, South America, West Indies, Africa and many more besides. These full-colour, digital images make it easier than ever before to trace ancestors who left the UK for a life abroad or to serve the Empire for a few years. Search the Passenger Lists now.

Migration records

As well as the Passenger Lists, findmypast.com also contains a great number of other resources for tracing Children of the Empire. Search the Register of passport applications 1851-1903 as a perfect companion to the earlier passenger lists. Findmypast also holds a number of lists and registers for the East India Company, the India Office and the Bengal Civil Service. Search them now.

Overseas Birth, Marriage and Death records

Aside from Migration records, findmypast.com also hold extensive Consular and Overseas records. Find ancestors who were born, married or died abroad including our BMD’s at sea indexes.

Visit the website of Empire’s Children here

Another decade added to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists 1920 – 1929

Ancestorsonboard.com has added another decade of records to the UK Outbound Passenger Lists currently available. Records now include an incredible 15,749,960 names within 97,614 passenger lists spanning 1890 to 1929.

There’s more information available on the original images than in previous decades, such as each passenger’s last address in the UK, making it easier than ever to fill in the gaps in your research. 

The 1920s – bright young things and abdicating kings

It was the era of decadence and glamour. The Jazz Age in America, epitomised by the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Europe it was The Golden Twenties. With music, entertainment and art people looked to purge themselves of the horrors of The Great War; modernism flourished in both literature and an embracing of technological advances.

In this decade people were beginning to travel not purely out of necessity, but for its own sake. People still emigrated and travelled on business but were now also able to visit their family abroad, enjoy cruises and participate in international sporting events. Immigration to the USA began to tail off as, in 1922, the States looked to close their borders. This led to a growth in people looking to make Canada and, increasingly, Australia their new home.

Famous Names

Amongst the passengers recorded in this new decade are those from the burgeoning world of entertainment and sport. 

Noel Coward, Cary Grant, under his real name Archibald Leach

Albert Warner of the Warner Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford can all be found in the 1920’s passenger lists, as can the Third Lanark Football team.

The now defunct Third Lanark AC’s trip was to raise funds for Scottish exiles in Argentina; a copy of the letter negotiating costs can be viewed here.

Find your ancestors in the Passenger Lists

Search by person or by ship name alone. You can now also narrow your search with the name of a travelling companion. A comprehensive guide to searching the passenger lists can be viewed here.

Start Searching Now

The Voyager Package gives you 30 days’ unlimited searching of all the Passenger Lists for only £15. Our premium Explorer Package offers you unlimited access to over 500 million records on findmypast, including the passenger lists, and costs £125 for 12 months – the equivalent of just £10.50 a month. You can also view the Passenger Lists on a pay-per-view basis. It costs 10 units to view a transcription and 30 units to view, print and save the full-colour digital images.

Fishing fleet found in BT27 passenger lists

The attached image is the first page of the passenger list for the voyage of the Kaiser I Hind from London to Calcutta on 12th October 1893.

The passenger list shows what appears to be part of a fishing fleet. There are no obvious fishermen on board, however, because this is a very special type of fishing fleet. All the people on this page are noted simply as being “ladies and gentlemen”. Reading down the list of names, past Mrs Wright, Mrs Simpson, the infant and ayah (Indian nanny), you come to Miss Max, Miss Cowell, Miss Blyth, Miss Graham… a long sequence of unmarried women, down to Miss Sandys and Miss Good. This is the suspected “fleeting fleet”: marriageable young women sailing out to India in search of eligible bachelors, preferably the so-called “heaven-born” serving in the Indian Civil Service or officers in the Army. The fleet sailed out from Britain in the autumn or early winter and spent the next few cooler Indian months socialising at the British clubs and angling for a groom. There was always a shortage of unattached British women in India, so the arrival of the fishing fleet was doubtless fondly awaited by sincere and ardent gentlemen ready to be affianced, not to mention by dastardly bounders who enjoyed toying with a lady’s affections for the season.

Unsuccessful women – the “returned empties” – re-embarked for Britain in the spring.

According to the charity British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, 2 million British and other Europeans are buried in the Indian sub-continent. Many more British people than realise it have a connection with India. If you are interested in the subject of the British in India from a family history perspective, two excellent places to start are BACSA’s website and the Families in British India Society.

Images

The Honourable Member

Ancestorsonboard was launched last week with the long-distance outbound passenger lists for the period 1890-1899, being the first 10 years of records held within The National Archives’ BT27 record series.

By the 1890s, Britain’s long relationship with India had become a complex entanglement, full of contradictions and paradoxes. It’s interesting to see in the passenger lists for vessels heading out to India not just British passengers but also a good number of Indians – and not just the occasional anonymous ayah attending young children (an ayah was an Indian nanny, usually greatly beloved by her charges, judging by autobiographies and oral histories of the British in India). If you search on ancestorsonboard under any common surname from the sub-Continent, there is a decent chance that you will be returned positive search results. Try for yourself under names such as Ali, Banerjee, Khan, Rahman or Singh. Some of these men – and they usually were men – were professionals: lawyers, doctors and teachers who had been educated or trained in UK. Others were Indian princes – the other day I came across His Highness The Maharajah of Kapurthala.

Click below to see a page of a passenger list from 1896 which, five names from the end, includes “Bhownaggree Mr MP”, a single male “gentleman” travelling from London to Bombay. We cannot be entirely sure but it seems highly probable that MP refers to Member of Parliament and not the initials of the traveller in question. If so, this passenger list captures a historic figure in Anglo-Indian relations. Although today not a household name like Gandhi, Sir Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree was well known in his day. His achievement was to become only the second Indian to be elected to the House of Commons and the first Tory MP to be so – the first Indian MP in Britain, Naoroji, had entered the House as a Liberal Party MP in 1892. Against all expectations at the time, Bhownaggree, who was a barrister, won a seat in Bethnal Green in London’s East End in 1895 and, moreover, held it and was re-elected in 1900. Bhownaggree also serves as a salutary warning against the over-simplifying of history: he was a supporter of the British Empire and yet a campaigner against the over-taxing of India, respected by Gandhi as a champion of the rights of Indians in South Africa but known by other Indian nationalists as “Bow and Agree” because of the accommodations he made with the British.

Images

Penny farthing for your thoughts

Hmm. We were forewarned to expect the unexpected in BT27 but we did not quite expect this.

The drawing shown is on the front of a pre-printed passenger list covering the saloon passengers on the Lycia on its voyage from Liverpool to Kurrachee (as today’s Karachi was then known in the English-speaking world) and Bombay in 1891.

The engravers responsible for this charming picture of a moustachioed gent on a penny farthing were the renowned Boston firm of John A Lowell & Co. The penny farthing boneshaker might have already been on the road to obsolescence by 1891, following the invention of the safety bicycle (forerunner of the modern bike) in 1885. However, it still had a few more years of life in it: the 1890s was the decade of the so-called bicycle craze, during which cycling became highly fashionable, including among liberated women, leading (among other things) to the invention of the bloomers (but that’s another story).

The question remains, though, why this was thought to be an appropriate image to grace the front of the passenger list. Was a team of top cyclists on board, heading to the sub-Continent to demonstrate their art? Or was this simply 1891’s aspirational equivalent of a young woman sitting cross-legged at a laptop with a cappuccino? Answers in an e-mail to the usual address please.

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