In a message dated 15/05/2007 08:30:41 GMT Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: My Cumbrian ancestral relatives sailed from Liverpool to AUS and USA - from which ports would my North Eastern relatives have sailed - say - 1870? I very rarely read anything about migrants from the NE and I know there were many! Thanks Ann Ann: You can see from a map that for anyone setting out to sail across the Atlantic, Liverpool - or London, Southampton or Bristol - is a much better place to start from than anywhere in the NE of England. The journey is so much shorter, and therefore quicker and cheaper. By 1870 there was a good railway system throughout the country (more or less) and so Liverpool was comparatively easy for anyione to reach, especially if they were coming from an industrial region where the need for lots of mineral railways meant that a good passenger network had also developed. There were a handful of sailings from the NE but that literally is all. Often they were newly-built emigrant ships making their maiden voyages, later voyages being made from other ports. Geoff Nicholson