England Passenger Lists

Documents relating to international arrivals and departures can be very useful in tracing ancestors across international borders. Such UK documents primarily enumerate British citizens, but may also include passengers originating in and destined to other countries, including continental Europe, Africa, the United States and Canada and many others.

BT27 Outward Passenger Lists
The BT27 records (Board of Trade, Series 27) are the collection of outward passenger lists for those departing U.K. ports from 1890 to 1960. This includes arrivals through New York, but also many other American, Canadian, Caribbean, Central and South American, European and African ports coming from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In addition, travel originating from other European countries that passed through one of the busy ports of the United Kingdom would also be included as part of this collection. The information given in the lists usually includes age, occupation, and (from 1922) a UK address of each passenger.

The records are held at The records of passenger lists are held at the National Archivies (General Registrar's Office), Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Surrey, TW9 4DU, United Kingdom and also available online for a fee at AncestorsOnBoard and FindMyPast.com.

For more information, see:
 * www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/searchthearchives/migration.htm?homepage=fr-bt27

BT26 Inward Passenger Lists
The BT26 records (Board of Trade, Series 26) are the collection of inward passenger lists for those arriving in U.K. ports from 1878 to 1960 (however, few records are available prior to 1890.) The information given in these lists includes the age, occupation, address in the United Kingdom and the date of entering the country of passengers entering the United Kingdom by sea from ports outside Europe and the Mediterranean.

The manuscript records are held at the National Archives in Kew. The lists are arranged in boxes under the names of the ports of arrival. Lists of ships for a particular month by landing port are available. They are currently in process of being digitised by Ancestry.co.uk.

For more information, see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=1497&amp;CATLN=3&amp;Highlight=&amp;FullDetails=True