The curatorial team at Brunel’s ss Great Britain has started an exciting project to find and transcribe all the passenger and crew lists for the magnificent ship.
The lists are held in archives all over the world. For example, passenger details of the voyages to New York are held in the city’s National Archives while the crew lists are at the National Archives in London and the Record Library in Liverpool.
The details of the voyages to and from Melbourne are held at the State Library of Victoria in Australia, so the task of acquiring copies of these documents was an adventure in itself.
This project will bring all this information together for the first time. It will allow us to find out about the passengers who sailed on the ship’s maiden voyage to New York in 1845 and learn about the men and women who worked on the ship and how long they stayed in service.
Volunteers at the ss Great Britain Trust have started to transcribe the information and already patterns are emerging, with insights into where these people came from and with whom they travelled. To our delight, we have discovered that quite a number of official logbooks have survived at the National Archives in London.
Tales of desertion, rowdiness and progression through the ranks are waiting to be uncovered. The intention is to create an online database that visitors and researchers can use to find information on their ancestors, on people who share their family name or are from their local town, or even to discover how many children were born on board the ss Great Britain.
Joanna Thomas is a maritime curator at the ss Great Britain Trust, Bristol
The lists are held in archives all over the world. For example, passenger details of the voyages to New York are held in the city’s National Archives while the crew lists are at the National Archives in London and the Record Library in Liverpool.
The details of the voyages to and from Melbourne are held at the State Library of Victoria in Australia, so the task of acquiring copies of these documents was an adventure in itself.
This project will bring all this information together for the first time. It will allow us to find out about the passengers who sailed on the ship’s maiden voyage to New York in 1845 and learn about the men and women who worked on the ship and how long they stayed in service.
Volunteers at the ss Great Britain Trust have started to transcribe the information and already patterns are emerging, with insights into where these people came from and with whom they travelled. To our delight, we have discovered that quite a number of official logbooks have survived at the National Archives in London.
Tales of desertion, rowdiness and progression through the ranks are waiting to be uncovered. The intention is to create an online database that visitors and researchers can use to find information on their ancestors, on people who share their family name or are from their local town, or even to discover how many children were born on board the ss Great Britain.
Joanna Thomas is a maritime curator at the ss Great Britain Trust, Bristol
