Major References

Collections

The Convict Ships 1787-1868
This guide by Charles Bateson is considered to be the definitive guide to Australia's period of transportation. Voyages include New South wales, Norfolk Island, Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. Typical information can be obtained regarding life on board for both crew and convict, records of deaths, numbers and the length of different voyages.

Log of Logs
This three volume set by Ian Nicholson provides access to information about voyages from 1788 to 1988 for Australia and the New Zealand surrounding oceans and is a must for anyone looking for information about ships that have travelled through the Australia and New Zealand surrounding oceans.

LLoyd's Register of Shipping
This useful resource has records of vessels from 1764, naming the owners and builders and the voyages undertaken.

State Library of Western Australia's Ship Index
An important resource for anyone researching ships in Australia. This index refers to a range of information about ships (including our unique photographs and postcard collection). However it does not contain passenger lists. Make sure you speak to the staff in regards to the card catalogue version of this index as not everything is online.

Community Resources

WA Genealogical Society Inc.
This is an active group of genealogical enthusiasts. Their webside provides many useful links.

Western Australian Maritime Musuem - The Welcome Walls
The Welcome Walls pays tribute to the millions of migrants who arrived in Fremantle as the gateway to Western Australia. This website has a searchable database of arrivals with date of arrival, the ships name, details of their occupation, who they came with and where they came from, amongst other useful information for family historians. Definetely worth a visit if your ancestor arrived in Fremantle.

Other Information Resources

Government

Australian National Maritime Museum
Includes pictures, drawings and plans of ships and is indexed in order of the ships names. Also links back to the Maritime Museum home website for a look at their collection.

National Archives of Australia : Passenger Records
This site provides very useful background information about passenger records in Australia. It also explains how to find out about the passenger records that are held by the National Archives.

Western Australia Shipwrecks Database
Provides information on Western Australian shipwrecks. A variety of searches can be performed from including name, type of vessel and the date of the shipwreck.

Net Links

Australian Shipping
Contains over 51,000 shipping movements and 70,000 passenger entries. Includes arrivals and departure and where possible includes background information as well.

Basics on Australian Shipping and Immigration
This website is a great guide for finding how out to locate information on; military, assisted, unassisted, and convict shipping to Australia. Highly recommended!

British Merchant Navy
This website has an alphabetical pictorial collection of the merchant navy ships.

Convicts to Australia
This is a comprehensive website which provides a great deal of information. Specifically there is a page which discusses Western Australian convicts, ship names and passenger lists along with details regarding the offence of each of the convicts.

Immigrant Ships
Great index that lists voyage information and also includes passenger lists in order of port of arrival and departure from the 1600's to the 1900's.

Index to ships in books
A searchable database that includes nearly 85,000 ships names that have been taken from a bibliography of books. Whilst the books used in the database have a strongly American bias it is still a useful resource for finding out more about a particular ship.

Lloyd's Register of Ships
Contains an online index of registration details of British and Foreign ships since 1764.There are also some links to other useful shipping webpages.

Magellan - the ships encyclopedia
This website has a number of photographs with voyages and some biographies of the ships. The majority of the ships appear to be those that travelled to the United States.

Naval Biographical Database
Includes people, places ,ships ,organisations and events associated withn the Royal Navy since 1660.

Search whatever Australia
This is a search engine and directory for Australia genealogy that includes links to passenger lists and shipping pages.

Ships List
This website Includes a whole range of links relating to ships for Australia and beyond including links to passenger lists.

Ships logs and journals - Aust. & N.Z.
Great website full of a number of links to ships logs, photographs and passenger list information as well as convicts and convict ship links.

State Library of Victoria - picture catalogue
This search tool allows you to search by ship name and the resulting photographs are downloadable.