RMS Caronia Timeline

Passenger Lists Transcribed

Currently, there are no PaxLists in my collection that are awaiting transcription. However, the transcribed lists shown represent nearly 18% of the entire Timeline content. Below is the Section Index to the Passenger Lists types.

Passenger List Searching

You can Search the Timeline. There is a guide on useful search techniques on that page.

Passenger List Information Sources

Here on the Timeline, the “Green Goddess” Passenger List Transcripts emanate from 3 different sources. However, quite apart from some of the immigration documents being quite difficult to decipher, each source has their own presentation problems, as explained below.

Passenger Lists Published by Cunard

These cover two types of journey; Caronia's transatlantic crossings and her cruises. The former only lists the passengers’ names, and the latter usually includes the city and state from whence each passenger came.

What's common to both is that first-names of wives travelling with their husbands are not annotated. Also, if a wife is travelling on her own, often it's her husband's first name that's annotated rather than her own.

These lists were printed ashore, while the amendments sheet was printed on board. Often the information is incomplete because the inserted loose-leaf page has been parted from the main booklet.

Passenger Lists from U.S. Immigration

Passenger manifests, prepared by the ship's Purser, list everyone who arrived at the port of New York. What these lists don't include are any titles, such as Doctor, Lady, Major, etc. What they do show are the first-names of everyone, so where lists are amalgamated from both sources, these pieces of information are added.

What the Immigration lists also provide is the port of embarkation and destination of each passenger, though beyond 1955 they don't always show the latter. These details are absent from transatlantic lists published by Cunard. Accordingly, they have been added to the transcribed lists.

Passenger Lists from British Immigration

Many British Immigration lists I have access to are transcribed as “Combined Southampton Arrivals”, listed in the Section H Index. Voyages involve Eastbound Arrivals from New York via Le Havre. Both First and Cabin classes are found, separated, within each list.

Cruise arrivals via Cherbourg are listed in the Section K Index.

• Perusal of the documents shows that it's difficult to record accurate marital status for female adults
• In early lists, names are presented Family Name first with no pronoun
• Early transcripts are also presented in strict alphabetical order. This means that people with the same family name may not be related
• Only information for Southampton disembarkations are included
• Access to Le Havre information still eludes me

Combined British Immigration & Published Lists

The British Immigration manifests come into their own when they complement information gained from Cunard's published lists. I'm always looking out for any New York to Southampton published list so I can complete the picture better.

• If a Cunard published list is to hand then the information from the British manifests has been added to an existing Major Cruise or Eastbound Transatlantic passenger list…
  • In this case the Southampton disembarkations are separated
  • though maybe not strictly correct the remainder are listed as having disembarked at Le Havre on transats, or at Cherbourg (or ports prior) on cruises
  • Like the U.S. manifests, opportunities exist to add in first names where these are missing from published lists