Family historians will be pleased that, for the first time, The National Archives has enabled online access to its comprehensive database of passenger lists from ships leaving the UK on voyages to North America, Australia, India and South Africa between 1890 – 1960.

The database will allow viewers access to digitised images of the original ship passenger records online. In all, it consists of 1.5 million pages, and lists 30 million passengers. As well as every ship passenger record containing the names of each passenger, the name of the ship, the date and UK port of departure and the destination port, the records may also include the address, age, marital status, occupation and nationality of each passenger, providing invaluable details that could help uncover more branches of a family tree.

The resource includes passenger records from the period of mass migration between 1890 and 1914 when an estimated average of 131,000 people emigrated from Great Britain to other parts of the globe every year.