Hello Allan, It is helpful to have such a name spelling with a known location, South Australia. As Marg mentions, the newspapers are great and I learned a bit about this fellow, such as his name was Jacob Nissen Maag ... he settled in the Coromandel Valley and he died at the age of 63, on 25th April 1918 .. his wife was Sarah and he had six daughters and three sons .. they had lost their 9 year old (elder) son, Victor Jacob on 15 May 1902 .. their eldest daugher Carolina married on 6th May 1908 ... their fifth daughter Adelaide S. married on 31st August 1915 All that good stuff, but not covering the later 19th century ... yet. They will be adding more years in future. The South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1858-1889) http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/title/7 [only 1850s and 1860s scanned so far] The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889-1931) http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/title/34 [only 1900s and 1910s scanned so far] The Naturalization looks like the same fellow ... in was 18th April 1890 at age 34 ... 14 years in South Australia which would make his arrival roughly 1876 .. it says he was a Market Gardener. It does says he was a native of A____ade, Germany though. If this is your chap at least you have him surrounded. I also noticed this file at the National Archives site [I searched simply Ship Deserters ] Series number D11 Title Rough register of ships crew reported as deserters at Port Adelaide Accumulation date range 1 Jan 1873 - 25 Aug 1975 Contents date range 18 Mar 1873 - 25 Aug 1975 I also checked the Danish emigration archives for the name MAAG and it didn't return a one, just Maagensen or Maagaard for example. Good luck! Sue -- TheShipsList Website http://www.theshipslist.com/ At 04:46 PM 2010-05-04 +0800, Allan Bruse wrote: >An ancestor (by marriage) of mine was said to have deserted his ship in >South Australia. He was a Danish seaman (I assume merchant seaman) named >Jacob Maag. I'm only estimating the time of the incident to be the late >19th century. Can anyone suggest how I might obtain information about the >man or his ship, please? >Regards, >Allan Bruse