Using the Archive for Travel and Migration Research

Published on 24 July 2017 by

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Old newspapers regularly featured passenger lists, news from abroad, foreign destination guides and other travel-related musings, making the British Newspaper Archive the perfect research companion for anyone interested in how people moved around the world in days gone by.

Whether you’re a genealogist having trouble pinpointing your family’s voyage to another country or a student doing a thesis on historical migration patterns, the Archive may hold a key piece of information for your research. We’ve even got specialty titles dedicated to travel and migration.

Homeward Mail

What you can expect to find

There are no limits to what you can uncover in the Archive and everyone’s research will be unique, however, here are some typical travel-related themes you will see crop up again and again as you search.

Vivid descriptions of what life was like on board emigrant ships
Articles on free and assisted emigration
Reasons people chose to emigrate
Passenger lists
Articles on shipwrecks and other travel disasters
Notices of births, marriages and deaths at sea
News, events and messages from abroad
Travel history – land, sea and air
Holiday destination guides

5 search tips

1. There’s no guarantee that you’ll find a passenger list for every ship in the newspapers. They weren’t always listed.

2. If you can’t find the name of a ship’s passenger, try searching by surname and a distinguishing keyword. Passengers were often only listed by their title and surname.

3. To find images of what life was like on board an emigrant ship, use the ‘exact phrase’ search option in our advanced search. Enter a ship name, destination, departure port or some other piece of information you already know and click ‘Search’. On the search results page, use the ‘type’ filter and select ‘Illustrated’ to narrow your results.

Article type search filter

Illustrated London News, 20 January 1849 | Image © Illustrated London News Group

4. If you want to learn more about one of our specialist shipping titles (or any newspaper in the Archive), go to it’s title page by clicking the search icon on the top menu of the site and then choosing ‘Browse by title’. From there, click on any newspaper title to be taken to it’s dedicated page, which includes more information about that publication, our current holdings and year coverage available. You can even take a sneak peak into the newspaper by clicking the featured page.