Hello listers, Were Merchant ships passenger ships as well?  I am searching for more information regarding ships from London to Vera Cruz in the 1820's, when England had commercial interests in Mexico.   I can find very few on Ancestry.com departing from London to New York, then on to Vera Cruz.   Tracing the Merchant ships departing Vera Cruz, arriving to New York and then to London is sparse.  And perhaps they didn't take that route.  Is it possible Passenger ships and Merchant ships are listed in separate categories?   Can someone point me in the right direction,or know of a link for ships other than the Royal Navy ships?   Thanks, Susan

Hello Susan In the 1820s it would be fairly safe to say that there really weren't passenger ships as such. If people needed to go overseas they looked for what was basically a merchant ship going in the right direction. Accommodation would be in an officer's cabin aft, at a price, or if there were numbers of people to be carried and the vessel was big enough, in the 'tween decks - a deck space under the main deck and above the cargo hold. However even in the case of vessels carrying hundreds of people to a destination like, say, Australia, the passenger accommodation was temporary, the vessel would carry as full a cargo as possible, and on arrival, would look to load another cargo to take elsewhere. It would not necessarily run to a regular route or timetable, but would advertise its intentions in a local paper. Examples of such advertisements (from the 1840s) can be found in the Australian papers such as page 3 of *http://tinyurl.com/q8kx6mz <http://tinyurl.com/q8kx6mz>* As with all generalisations exceptions and qualifications immediately come to mind. For example there were packets such as the ships of the Black Ball line which ran regular services across the Atlantic, but they would have made the majority of their money from the things they carried, rather than the people so my point basically holds good. So to answer your first question, passenger ships at that time were basically merchant ships. To answer your second, they wouldn't have been listed in separate categories in whatever it was you found. So if someone wanted to travel from London to Vera Cruz, they could look for (a) a vessel departing London intending to call at Santa Cruz (and possibly other places) or (b) a vessel departing London for a place where other vessels departed for Vera Cruz - such as a port in Spain perhaps, or on the East Coast of North America, or Havana or somewhere like that. I suggest that you need the shipping newspaper, Lloyd's List. Fortunately, some of the 1820s are available online, though I don't think name searching is possible in all years, and in those years for which it is possible, OCR transcriptions may be unreliable. 1820 for example provided a number of hits for "Vera" with "Cruz" frequently being garbled, so you may have to be creative with your search terms. You can find the editions for 1820-1826 at http://www.maritimearchives.co.uk/lloyds-list.html . Remember that vessels may show up in Vera Cruz itself, and in their ports of departure and subsequent arrival. But that will only give you the names of vessels which called there, and their routes, not the names of anyone on board except maybe the master. Cheers Piers On 10 November 2013 14:56, Susan C <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello listers, > > Were Merchant ships passenger ships as well? I am searching for more > information regarding ships from London to Vera Cruz in the 1820's, when > England had commercial interests in Mexico. I can find very few on > Ancestry.com departing from London to New York, then on to Vera Cruz. > Tracing the Merchant ships departing Vera Cruz, arriving to New York and > then to London is sparse. And perhaps they didn't take that route. Is it > possible Passenger ships and Merchant ships are listed in separate > categories? > > > Can someone point me in the right direction,or know of a link for ships > other than the Royal Navy ships? > > > Thanks, Susan > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

Hi Susan, Further to other contributions, in the light of the great importance of West Indies trade to the UK, there was a regular service, or at least as regular as the weather would permit, carried out by British Packets, serving the many British possessions in the West Indies, Vera Cruz, Havana and the Eastern coast of South America, some of the West Indies packets starting at Vera Cruz, calling at various islands, often including Havannah, en route to England, rarely, as far as I know calling at New York, there already being a direct connection from the UK. In addition to carrying mail these vessels occasionally carried treasure or bullion, although their insurance was probably higher during the 1820s as they were considered a soft a touch to the many pirates and no-goods frequenting West Indies waters in those days, and already as mentioned on the list recently, with the RN picking up much of the trade for treasure and bullion etc. So since you say he had commercial interests in Mexico I would be inclined to include British Packets in your search, which invariably operated out of Falmouth, Cornwall, England, from whence coastal traffic could take your passenger up the Channel to London, or, if he could afford it, and time was of the essence, he could take the rather more uncomfortable route overland, if easterly winds were blowing and he was unlikely to arrive in London for some weeks by sea, and as is and was sometimes the case when high pressure sets in across the country, with an easterly blow preventing all but the most agile vessels sailing up the English Channel, and on occasion requiring the assistance of RN vessels at Plymouth to take out water and provisions for vessels waiting in the Western Approaches for a change in the wind....a similar problem existed at the Straights of Gibraltar, with many hundreds of vessels sometimes being held up, and, it is said, making an unforgettable sight for the residents of Gibraltar when the wind changed direction and they all set a press of sail to pass through the Straights into the Med., in order to be the first to market with their cargo, but I'm wandering off the topic....!! Would have made a wonderful picture though, I should think ? Paul On Sun, 10 Nov 2013 06:56:43 -0800 (PST), Susan C <[email protected]> wrote: >Hello listers, > >Were Merchant ships passenger ships as well?  I am searching for more information regarding ships from London to Vera Cruz in the 1820's, when England had commercial interests in Mexico.   I can find very few on Ancestry.com departing from London to New York, then on to Vera Cruz.   Tracing the Merchant ships departing Vera Cruz, arriving to New York and then to London is sparse.  And perhaps they didn't take that route.  Is it possible Passenger ships and Merchant ships are listed in separate categories?   > > >Can someone point me in the right direction,or know of a link for ships other than the Royal Navy ships?   > > >Thanks, Susan > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message 50° 33' N, 2° 26' W http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/Naval.html