Ferries between Ireland and England

[Lindad]

With all the recent talk about passenger lists, we got very excited about the possibility of finding out when our family migrated back to England from Ireland. However, the passengers lists, of course, only relate to those emigrating from the UK and Ireland to far away places...

Presumably there are no records of passengers shuttling back and forth across the Irish Sea (1890-1912-ish)? Are there?

[CanadianCousin]

Presumably there are no records of passengers shuttling back and forth across the Irish Sea (1890-1912-ish)? Are there?

If only there were! My grandparents moved from Ireland to England circa 1900, and I'd love to be able to find out exactly when. Sadly, all of the reference books I've read indicate that no such records exist, as at the time it was internal travel within the UK.

I believe I've seen somewhere that there are lists of passengers coming to the UK from other countries, but sadly this still excludes Ireland, which didn't become independent until 1922.

Sorry -

Tim

[Mutley]

I would love to have that information too.

But I believe the ferries were like buses, they just bought a ticket and hopped on and off.

It would be interesting to know if there were any regulations at all at the time. Something like... journeys over a certain distance required names taken. Did the French or Manx Ferries have passenger lists or was it travelling from Ireland was like coming from say, the Isle of Wight?

I can feel a google coming on....

[busyglen]

I would love to have that information too.

But I believe the ferries were like buses, they just bought a ticket and hopped on and off.

It would be interesting to know if there were any regulations at all at the time. Something like... journeys over a certain distance required names taken. Did the French or Manx Ferries have passenger lists or was it travelling from Ireland was like coming from say, the Isle of Wight?

I can feel a google coming on....

When I was searching for a particular rellie, I got quite excited by the thought that they may have `skipped' to Ireland, and started to search records, only to discover the same as Lindad!

Glenys

[Colin Moretti]

BT26 contains the Passenger Lists Inwards... [giving] the names of all passengers arriving in the UK where the ship's voyage began in a port outside Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. Names of passengers who boarded these ships at European ports and disembarked in the UK will be included. Note that passenger lists for ships whose voyages both began and ended within Europe are not included. For example, no lists survive for voyages between the UK and Ireland

Source: Immigrants and Aliens, Kershaw & Pearsall, TNA

My emphasis.

So not even ferries from France, Belgium, Holland or Germany are listed.

Colin

[Peter Goodey]

Many people who were returning to England did so by military transport

[Lindad]

It all smacks of an amazing lack of foresight on the part of our great greats and those who generally made things tick way back when. Didn't they realise that we'd want to look for them one day?

I wonder who will want to look for us in the years to come - and what they will want to know?

[Ladkyis]

During the time when people were escaping from the famine in Ireland, it is known that ships would take on passengers for as much money as the people had in their possession and then just dump them on the shore somewhere in England or Wales. A lot of the ships would come up the Bristol Channel and have to wait out in the roads for the tide to take them into a port. They would off load their passengers onto the mud flats and then those people would have to walk, sometimes over a mile, through clinging sticky silt to the shore and then several more miles to the nearest town or village.
Sometimes the tide would catch them still on the mudflats and they would drown. There are reports in the local paper here, The Monmouthshire Merlin of whole families perishing in the fast rising waters of the Bristol channel because they had tried to escape the famine by getting passage with an unscrupulous ship's captain.
The good old days? I don't think so.