AUSTRALIAN RECORDS OF MERCHANT MARINE SHIPPING AND SEAMEN - NEW SOUTH WALES
 

Chris Mobbs

This is PART 2 of a series, as follows:
PART 1 - Commonwealth and Australia-wide records
PART 2 - New South Wales records
PART 3 - Northern Territory records
PART 4 - Queensland records
PART 5 - South Australia records
PART 6 - Tasmania records
PART 7 - Victoria records
PART 8 - Western Australia records.

A. National Archives records

Refer to PART 1 for descriptions of these records and how to use the Control Numbers referenced below.

Shipping Registers
                                                                                  Date Range            Control Nos.

  Registers of Engagement & Articles of Agreement

                                                                       Register or          Date range          Control Nos.
                                                                       Article

                                                                          Type                 Date range          Control Nos.

The responsible State archives authority is now known as State Records . The website gives on-line access to a Concise Guide to the State Archives, via the Holdings sub-menu.  This Guide contains references to shipping, seamen, masters, mates, engineers etc.

The forerunner to State records, the Archives Authority of NSW, issued a microform Genealogy Resource Kit. This kit is in most genealogical libraries and many state libraries.  While it is predominantly aimed at assisting the tracing of immigrants, it also contains some records relevant to shipping and seamen.

The kit contains microfilmed records of ships arriving in Sydney from outside of NSW.  The records contain a list of the crew and the name and signature of the ship’s master.  They are arranged chronologically by date of arrival (although they can be slightly out of order) from January 1854 to December 1900.  So if you know when a ship arrived you can go straight to the relevant reel.   The reels are numbered AO399 to AO560.  They are titled ‘Passengers Arriving’, but in reality they don’t always show all passengers if they were subsidised immigrants, whereas they always show the crew.

There is also a microfilm index of ships arriving in Sydney, titled ‘Vessels Arrived’, in two volumes, 1837 to 1900, and 1900 to 1925.  These are on reels AO2502 and AO 2503A.  They are arranged alphabetically by name of ship within a number of time periods - in other words the index runs A to Z period 1, then A to Z period 2 etc.  From here you can find the relevant ship arrival record as above, at least up to 1900.

I know of no 19th century master index of crew names, or masters’ names, which points to their ship, but see Section A for later records.

There is a microfiche index of passengers and crew in and out of Sydney extracted from Sydney newspapers, in three volumes, 1830-1832, 1833-1835, and 1836-1837. This was published by the Grafton Family History Centre, and its ISBN is 1 875840 37 0.

There is a microfiche index of Ships and Masters to Sydney 1842-55, compiled by Aileen Trinder and Pat Stemp, and published by PASTKEYS (ISBN 0 646 19372 4).

There are three volumes of Shipping Arrivals and Departures, Sydney, published by the Roebuck Society.  These give the date, name of master/owner, tonnage, port of registration, previous port and cargo.
Volume 1 (ISBN 0 909434 15 8), compiled by J.S Cumpston, covers 1788 to 1825.
Volume 2 (ISBN 0 909434 14 X), compiled by Ian Nicholson, covers 1826 to 1840.
Volume 3 (ISBN 0 909434 35 2), compiled by Graeme Broxham & Ian Nicholson, covers 1841 to 1844.

There is a book called Ships Deserters 1852 to 1900 by Melton, J, published by the Library of Australian History, 1986 (ISBN 0 908120 64 8).  It contains extracts from Government Gazettes of the period, and often contains physical descriptions of the deserters.

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