hi Susan Piers has provided a very good reply to your question on Vera Cruz. To add a minor point, if you can read Spanish (or use Google translator translate.google.com) then you could also look at the online Mexican archives, which they have done a good job of digitizing their records. Go to www.agn.gob.mx .. look on the right for "Guia General de los Fondos" click this.. on the next page that displays, top left corner click on the yellow text "Fondos, Expedientes y Documentos". .. when you see "Archivo General de la Nación" click the plus (+) sign and then click on the word "Instituciones Coloniales" This sets you up to search in the AGN's colonial records..then click on "Buscar" (to search) I tried the words Vera Cruz 1820 - and received more than 170 results.. you need to hit Agregar (to add) and Acceptar (go and search for me). Marina Caja is equal to 'maritime records" Note - Mexico became independent in 1821, so also be prepared to look in the AGN non-colonial records if you are into the later 1820s. One other thought - the Shipping Registers for each year in the last column would often give the 'common' route sailed by each ship. Noting that the data was often old, it may help you to identify a particular ship if you later have a name to work from. You'd be amazed how many ships had a common name in a particular year. good luck Chris *Chris Maxworthy* *Australian Association for Maritime History* (AAMH) *http://aamh.academia.edu/ChrisMaxworthy <http://aamh.academia.edu/ChrisMaxworthy>* Piers wrote: 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