One Ship Study – Torilla and Roscommon (Updated 2 January 2024)
Project:
Analysis of passengers on the ships my parents arrived on in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in the early 1910s to establish if there were any links between the families on board prior to them departing England and after their arrival in Australia mainly on assisted passages. The aim of the research is to try and establish whether any passengers knew each other before their departure from London or arriving in Queensland.
Project Background:
I have now been researching my ancestors since 2010 and studying genealogy at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies since 2015 completing over 150 subjects and graduating nine times. I commenced the studies in an attempt to gain knowledge that would assist me in validating the results of my research on ancestors which has reached back to the early 900s.
It was a direct result of my studies and that they were reaching a point where I had run out of subjects of interest to me that I looked at how I could fill my retirement hours and gain more understanding of my parents and grandparents lives and why they decided to come to Australia.
From my research on ancestors I had found that my father departed London on the Torilla on 16 August 1911 arriving in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia on 10 October 1911 and my mother departed London on the Roscommon on 2 August 1912 arriving in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia on the 27 September 1912. Both were young children in the company of their parents.
Progress to date:
I commenced looking at the project recently finding both departure and arrival passenger lists on Findmypast and Queensland Government Housing and Public Works website. I downloaded both lists with the departure list providing information including the following:
First Name, Last Name, Gender, Age, Birth Year, Occupation, Departure Year, Departure Day, Departure Month , Departure Port, Destination Port, Country, Destination Country, Ship Name, Ship Official Number, Name of Ship’s Master and details on size of ship and number of passengers.
The arrival list enables me to check for any passengers listed as departing for Brisbane and not arriving and passengers arriving who may have joined the ship during the journey. Both passenger lists have been downloaded.
During my research on passenger lists I found that I could download data covering departures and arrivals for any ships from earlier periods in time allowing me to progress the project coverage to conduct research into people with the same family surnames that may have arrived in Australia in years prior to the arrival of my parents.
It was evident from my early research on the departure and arrival lists that there were some variations in the names listed. I contacted Queensland Archives to see if they could explain these variations and while doing this I found copies of the Ship Manifests for each ship. These records are seen as the only accurate record of passengers and included details on several deaths during the passage.
Planned Research:
My initial research plan was to:
- Attempt to identify where the arriving passengers lived and whether they may have known the families of my parents;
- Where did the arriving passengers live in Queensland? Did they stay in Brisbane or move to other areas of Australia;
- What were the conditions under the assisted passage and were any organizations or persons already living in Australia involved in my families gaining such passage.
Obviously, there will be twists and turns in the research depending on what information is found before I move to the extension of my research to consider families with the same surnames who arrived in years prior to my parents.
Data Collection:
The initial step in the collection of data was to establish a list of passengers both departing on the two ships from London and arriving in Australia. Using both data sets would enable identification of new passengers who may have joined the ships during the passage from London and any who may have changed their destination port. It would also identify any events onboard the ships such as births or deaths during the passage.
My search for the passenger departure lists commenced with the guide on looking for records of passengers at The National Archives. This explained what I needed to know before I started my searches. Fortunately I knew the name and year of birth of my family related passengers, the ships they came to Australia on and their port of arrival. Fortunately, online records were available for outgoing passengers covering the period 1890 to 1960. (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/passengers/).
A link in the guide took me to a search page on FindMyPast where I was able to search on the ship names and year of departure finding 321 passengers heading for Brisbane on the Roscommon in 1911 and 1,358 on the Torilla in 1911. (https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/passenger-lists-leaving-uk-1890-1960)
For the arrival lists of passengers I searched Queensland Archives finding a page on Immigration which took me to passenger lists for Assisted Immigration 1848-1912. This database had departure and arrival dates and ports, surgeons and masters on board and types of passage. It included links to scans of the register. (https://www.qld.gov.au/recreation/arts/heritage/archives/collection/immigration)
These lists revealed only 285 (105 family groups) passengers arriving on the Roscommon and 1,578 on the Torilla. The arrival data on the Torilla suggests that the departure details did not accurately indicate the destination port for the passengers.
After locating the manifests for each ship I was able to establish an accurate listing of the passengers and details such as names, gender, age or date of birth, occupation and county location in the United Kingdom or other country of origin, destination port in Queensland as well as their passage ticket type.
Ancestry Trees:
Using the ship manifest passenger lists I established two trees on Ancestry, the Roscommon and Tortilla including the known details from the passenger lists. My aim was to try and build these trees tracing passenger’s ancestors back several generations and forward to current generations.
My initial focus with these trees was to find information on where they had last lived prior to departure for Australia and where they lived after arriving in Queensland. However, I had hoped that tree hints would assist me to quickly track accurately the development of the life of the passengers after arriving in Queensland as well as their ancestry in the Northern hemisphere.
Early Issues:
The dominant early issue with the lists of passengers was establishing the correct spelling for the surnames and sorting out some family groupings with the same surnames. Fortunately most of these were relatively easy to resolve especially after locating the copies of the ship manifests. Another issue was related to passengers with common surnames was encountered in my attempts to identify details on their dates and places of birth, where they last lived prior to departure and after arrival in Queensland.
For a handful of passengers I have found it very difficult to clearly identify clearly who they were or where they went. These include two young children with surname either Baher or Baker who came to Queensland in the care of a matron but no other details on why they were taking the voyage or who their parents were. Another group of young people listed as being Church Army members also caused some difficulties in my early research.
One surprise in the early stages of research was encountering Scottish families on the Roscommon with the surname Rae. The Rae surname was found in my own family tree linked to my maternal grandmother’s ancestry.
My early research also made me realize that there was a pattern emerging with some families indicating that the husband/father had already migrated to Australia and that the mother/spouse was now following him out or in the case of an adult male on his own that the rest of the family would follow once he had established a life in Australia. It was also surprising to find some children as passengers in the early months of life.
It became very evident in the early months of the research that the research would take at least two or three years to complete and that much could be gained by concentrating on the Roscommon which had only 285 in 105 family groups passengers making tracing their details a little easier than the 1,578 passengers on the Torilla.
Passenger Data:
As one of the initial steps in my research I looked at the following basic data on the passengers including age groupings, gender, locations and occupations.
Gender – Roscommon:
| Age Group | Male | Female | Total | |||
| No. | % of Males | No. | % of Females | No. | % of Total | |
| 60+ | 1 | 0.6 | 1 | 0.8 | 2 | 0.7 |
| 50-59 | 3 | 1.8 | 4 | 3.4 | 7 | 2.5 |
| 40-49 | 3 | 1.8 | 8 | 6.8 | 11 | 3.9 |
| 30-39 | 28 | 16.8 | 29 | 24.6 | 57 | 20.0 |
| 20-29 | 34 | 20.4 | 25 | 21.2 | 59 | 20.7 |
| 10-19 | 38 | 22.8 | 15 | 12.7 | 53 | 18.6 |
| <10 | 60 | 36.9 | 36 | 30.5 | 96 | 33.7 |
| Total | 167 | 100.0 | 118 | 100.0 | 285 | 100.0 |
Gender – Torilla:
| Age Group | Male | Female | Total | |||
| No. | % of Males | No. | % of Females | No. | % of Total | |
| 60+ | 1 | 0.1 | 1 | 0.1 | ||
| 50-59 | 13 | 1.5 | 10 | 1.4 | 23 | 1.5 |
| 40-49 | 43 | 4.9 | 56 | 7.9 | 99 | 6.3 |
| 30-39 | 150 | 17.2 | 128 | 18.1 | 279 | 17.7 |
| 20-29 | 275 | 31.6 | 143 | 20.2 | 418 | 26.5 |
| 10-19 | 169 | 19.4 | 163 | 23.0 | 332 | 21.0 |
| <10 | 221 | 25.4 | 207 | 29.2 | 427 | 27.0 |
| Total | 871 | 100.0 | 708 | 100.0 | 1,579 | 100.0 |
Occupations – Roscommon:
I turned initially to the Ship Manifests for the Roscommon and Torilla for details on the trade or occupation of the passengers prior to boarding in London. For both ships the majority of passengers were recorded using terms such as wife, son or daughter. The Roscommon had 194 (68.1%) passengers recorded in these groupings while the Torilla had 1,226 (79.6%) in these groupings. Of the Roscommon passengers only 28 (9.8%) listed as having occupations that might be considered to be trades including baker, butcher, bricklayer, plumber, carpenter, painter, and tailor while, on the Torilla only 101 (6.4%) were found in these categories. Passengers classified as labourer accounted for 26 (9.1%) of passengers on the Roscommon and 192 (12.2%) passengers on the Torilla.
Locations – Roscommon:
As the passenger trees grew on Ancestry and I had difficulty keeping on top of the hints and I decided to simply search for information on where the passengers had lived prior to departure and after arrival in Queensland. To do this I focused mainly on the 1911 UK Census records and the 1910s Australian Electoral and Census records finding the following:
| Location | Number of Passengers | Number of Family Groups | Location | Number of Passengers | Number of Family Groups |
| England | 205 | 80 | Ireland | 5 | 4 |
| Berkshire | 10 | 2 | County Down | 5 | 4 |
| Cheshire | 4 | 1 | Scotland | 61 | 17 |
| Derbyshire | 6 | 2 | Edinburgh | 6 | 2 |
| Devonshire | 2 | 2 | Fifeshire | 5 | 1 |
| Dorset | 8 | 3 | Lanarkshire | 45 | 12 |
| Durham | 3 | 1 | Stirlingshire | 5 | 2 |
| Essex | 27 | 18 | Wales | 6 | 1 |
| Gloucestershire | 5 | 2 | Mountmouthshire | 6 | 1 |
| Hampshire | 6 | 3 | Jersey | 4 | 1 |
| Kent | 8 | 3 | Jersey | 4 | 1 |
| Lancashire | 52 | 15 | Europe | 1 | 1 |
| Middlesex | 12 | 6 | Denmark | 1 | 1 |
| Shropshire | 12 | 6 | Other | 3 | 1 |
| Staffordshire | 4 | 2 | Not recorded | 3 | 1 |
| Surrey | 3 | 2 | |||
| Warwickshire | 20 | 5 | Total | 285 | 105 |
| Yorkshire | 23 | 7 |
Locations – Torilla:
Unfortunately, most of the passenger locations in the Torilla manifest listed only if they were from England, Scotland, Ireland or a European country. This has resulted in an initial lack of detail on locations for the passengers on the Torilla.
| Location | Number of Passengers | Number of Family Groups | Location | Number of Passengers | Number of Family Groups |
| England | 912 | 365 | Austria | 3 | 2 |
| Scotland | 563 | 218 | Germany | 5 | 2 |
| Ireland | 72 | 48 | Not Recorded | 23 | 13 |
| Total | 1,578 | 648 |
Passage Type – Roscommon:
The four types of passages allocated in the Ship Manifest for the Roscommon were Nominated, Assisted, Full Payers and Church Army.
| Passage Type | ||||||
| Number of Males | % of Males | Number of Females | % of Females | Total | % of Total | |
| Nominated | 137 | 82.0 | 110 | 93.2 | 247 | 86.7 |
| Assisted | 6 | 3.6 | 4 | 3.4 | 10 | 3.5 |
| Full Payers | 9 | 5.4 | 4 | 3.4 | 13 | 5.2 |
| Church Army | 15 | 9.0 | – | – | 15 | 5.3 |
| Total | 167 | 58.6 | 118 | 41.4 | 285 | 100.0 |
Passage Type – Torilla:
| Passage Type | ||||||
| Number of Males | % of Males | Number of Females | % of Females | Total | % of Totals | |
| Nominated | 537 | 61.7 | 393 | 55.5 | 930 | 58.9 |
| Assisted | 299 | 34.3 | 234 | 33.1 | 533 | 33.8 |
| Full Payers | 11 | 1.3 | 6 | 0.8 | 17 | 1.1 |
| Church Army | 24 | 2.8 | – | – | 24 | 1.5 |
| Free | – | – | 75 | 10.6 | 75 | 4.7 |
| Total | 871 | 55.2 | 708 | 44.8 | 1,579 | 100.0 |
Further research:
My research is now steadily identifying details on specific locations for each passenger both prior to leaving London and after their arrival in Queensland. At this stage I have only 8 passengers from 7 family groups on the Roscommon who I am still trying to identify their Queensland address other than port of arrival. Of these I have been able to prove that all of these six returned to England at some stage leaving the two young Baker children who arrived escorted by a matron but simply disappear.
Obviously, the Torilla with many more passengers is taking more time and I still have 97 passengers from 47 family groups on the Torilla who I am still trying to identify their Queensland address other than port of arrival and 102 passengers from 62 family groups that I have yet to locate a specific city where they were living prior to departure.
It is hoped that with further research over the next six months that I will be able to not only find the missing location details but will further expand the knowledge on the passengers, their families and ancestry.
Past Year Research Update:
It has been a busy year on many fronts so my progress in my research has focussed on building the available data to include earlier generations and the changes since arrival in Queensland. This has resulted in now having 2605 people on the Roscommon tree and 7312 on the Torilla Tree.
While this research will continue there have been some surprising problems with locating either their Australian location or even that back in the United Kingdom prior to their departure for Queensland. From available records it would also appear that some may have returned home after only a short period in Australia.
Roscommon:
The research to date has left only two passengers, Albert Hall and John Powell, with no record found for their location in Australia after disembarking in Brisbane. Albert Hall was classified in the passenger list as a Church Army member from Essex, England. John Powell was classified as a Nominated passenger. Research found that Albert Hall died in October 1960 at West Ham, Essex, England. John Powell died in April 1969 in Wellington, Shropshire, England. Some information collected on Albert Hall suggests that his name may have been Hill not Hall and this is undergoing further research. It also looks as if John Powell may have married in Ellesmere, Shropshire in March, 1928. Research continues to find a record of when they may have left Australia and on what ship.
Torilla:
Obviously, with a much larger passenger list, it was to be expected that I may encounter more issues in finding details on the locations for some of them. At the moment there are 321 passengers where I remain searching for their location details prior to embarkment and 243 without details on their location in Australia apart from port where they disembarked. These passengers come from the range of passage ticket types.
Two Ship Study – Progress Update 2 January 2024
Now at the start of 2024 it feels appropriate that I let those interested know what I have been doing since I last updated the research report in September 2023.
Firstly, my time has been spent continuing to extend the original information on the passengers ship manifest list back at least five generations and forward to current times if this proved possible resulting in the current status for both ships.
SS Roscommon: Started with 285 passengers and now has 9,325 people in the database and 348 photographs and 36,251 unresolved hints covering 26583 records, 4,391 photographs, 383 stories from 4894 Ancestry family trees.
SS Torilla: Started with 1,585 passengers and now has 4,812 people in the database including 297 photographs and 16,049 unresolved hints covering 10,946 records, 2,265 photographs, 133 stories from 2,705 Ancestry family trees.
Secondly, from information gathered on the passenger locations gathered from census material, especially that from the 1911 and 1901 U censuses, it is doubtful that any possible relationship will be found for the majority of passengers. This has escalated the necessity to build Ancestry trees for each ship’s passengers in the hope of finding some ancestry connections or even common locations that may have brought them into contact.
Fortunately, a recent Family Tree Maker User Group meeting at the Society for Australian Genealogists caused me to look at a Relationship function in the software which will enable me to quickly look for any relationship between individual passengers from each group. I have already tested this on my own family tree and it is very informative and accurate.
To speed up this process I have now updated each ship tree to include my own close family ancestry and after evaluating this I am now looking at merging each ship tree with my family tree and even considering merging the Roscommon, Torilla and Maclachlan Ancestry Trees to investigate possible links.
Finally, I think you will now all understand that this study is not likely to be finalised without more work on my behalf so, given my Scottish heritage I am looking at escalating the research on Scottish passengers in the hope that this produces some positive results helping me to allocate more time to help finding more on all passengers.
Please remember that I welcome hearing from any people who may have ancestors who were passengers on either of the ships.
Cheers
Brian