Kylie’s mum in online passenger list

Mar 28 2008 Western Mail

THE complete set of passenger records for Britons who travelled by long-distance ocean liner between 1890 and 1960 went online for the first time today.

Fascinating details of voyages made by famous stars including actors Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, film director Alfred Hitchcock and playwright Noel Coward feature in the archive, alongside records of ordinary people’s departures for a new life in Australia in the 1940s and 50s.

The commercial venture by family history website findmypast.com, in association with the National Archives, has taken a team of 125 workers more than a year to complete, digitising 164,000 original passenger lists from long-distance voyages.

In all there are 1.1 million pages now on the internet which list 24 million passengers.

Highlights include:

A sailing by the Normandie from Southampton on November 5, 1938, which carried Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard, Anna Neagle and Noel Coward to New York;

The Titanic’s passenger list for its ill-fated maiden voyage in 1912;

Elizabeth Taylor’s journey to New York with her American parents in 1934, aged two;

Alfred Hitchcock’s passage to New York on January 11, 1955, on the Liberte;

Kylie Minogue’s Maesteg-born mother, Carol Jones, emigrating from Wales as a child in the 1950s; and

Voyages of famous Australians who were born in Britain, including singer and actress Olivia Newton John and pop stars the Bee Gees.

Parts of the archive have been online since last year but today’s addition of records from the 1950s marks the end of the project.

Commercial director at findmypast.com, Elaine Collins, said, “The availability of the passenger lists from ships that left British ports in the 1950s is an invaluable tool for people tracing relatives they believe may have left the UK during this period.

“The passenger records may very well provide a missing link for many family historians who have hit a brick wall in their research, as well as helping those outside of the UK to trace back to their British and European heritage.”

The National Archives’ Dan Jones added, “These records were previously only available on site at the National Archives and we hope digitisation will open up a hugely valuable resource for genealogists.”