What Was the Voyage Really Like?: A Brief Guide to Researching Convict and Immigrant Voyages to Australia and New Zealand (2nd edition)

Discovering when and how an ancestor arrived in Australia is the ambition of every family historian. In the majority of instances it is now relatively simple, as archives have been indexing passenger lists over the last few decades and many have put those indexes up on their websites and made them freely available.

Many of us wonder what the actual voyage was like and there are numerous resources that can be used to compile a detailed account of the voyage and what our ancestors would have experienced during the trip. Passenger lists outline who was on the ship - how many people and how many births and deaths occurred on board. There may also be health officer's reports and other ship reports to be found in the Colonial Secretary's correspondence in the various State Archives.

Newspapers can also provide information on the immigrants and the voyage and in earlier days may have included details of passengers. Perhaps the best source of all is a shipboard log or diary written by your own ancestor, but if you are not that lucky, then other passengers' diaries may be useful in providing details of what happened during the voyage.

Written as an expanded version of a talk that the author gives, this is an excellent up-to-date guide on the topic of researching "Convict and Immigrant Voyages to Australia and New Zealand". First released in 2010, this second edition has been revised and updated.