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New Zealand family-tree fanatics whose ancestors emigrated from Britain by ship are able to look up their relatives' life-changing journeys on the internet from today.
Details of some 30 million passengers who sailed out of Britain between 1890 and 1960 to destinations like New Zealand, 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, 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 emigrated 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.
"The passenger records may well provide a missing link for many genealogists who have hit a brick wall in their research, as well as helping those outside of the UK to trace back to their British heritage."
The 1890 to 1900 records go online from today, with the subsequent decades to follow over the next six months.
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 archives in Kew are stored chronologically and there are 1.5 million records to plough through. If you weren't sure of the year it made it difficult to find people," a findmypast.com spokeswoman said.
"Online you can easily search for example by name or ship."
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 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.
- AFP
