All aboard! British ancestry records go online

LONDON: Family tree fanatics whose ancestors emigrated from Britain by ship will be able to look up their relatives' life-changing journeys on the Internet from Wednesday.

Details of some 30 million passengers who sailed out of Britain between 1890 and 1960 to destinations like Australia, South Africa, North America and India are being made available online at the www.ancestorsonboard.com website.

The 1.5 million pages of passenger lists were previously only available at The National Archives in Kew, southwest London. The move should spark interest among family tree researchers, who are growing in number thanks to a series of historical archives being opened to the public in the Internet.

In particular, the database holds records from the period of mass emigration before the First World War. An estimated 125,000 British people immigrated to the United States, 50,000 to Canada and 25,000 to Australia every year between 1890 and 1914.

"The availability of the passenger lists from ships that left British ports in this period is an invaluable tool for people tracing relatives they believe may have left the UK during this period," said Elaine Collins, commercial director of family history website findmypast.com which developed the database. "They may provide a missing link for many genealogists who have hit a brick wall in their research, as well as helping those outside UK to trace their British heritage."   

Images of the passenger lists will be available to view, download, save and print. As well as the names, departure dates and destinations of each passenger, the records may also include their address, age, marital status and occupation.

"We hope that digitisation will open up a hugely valuable resource for genealogists and social historians all over the world," said Dan Jones, head of business development at The National Archives.

The passenger lists could shed new light on social trends. "There are war brides and babies from the First World War, soldiers who returned to Canada with English and Scottish wives," the spokeswoman said. The lists also reveal the story of Jewish migrants who fled persecution and poverty in Russia to escape to South Africa via British ports.

Passengers also include businessmen, diplomats and tourists and many European trans-migrants are listed. Famous faces found when compiling the online database include a 16-year-old British actor called Archibald Leach sailing in 1920 from Southampton to the United States, where he made his name as Hollywood idol Cary Grant.

The records also show British playwright Noel Coward travelling to New York - not to mention the passenger list of the ill-fated Titanic, which sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912. The 1890 to 1900 records go online from Wednesday, with the subsequent decades to follow over the next six months.