Hi All, This is my first posting to Ships List but I have been reading the '[TSL] manifests process & "missing" child' postings with interest. Since 'my' ship and passengers were travelling in earlier times than the ship in the above discussion, I am not sure if the conclusions about the accuracy of the manifests applies in my case. I have a situation where only one child was listed as travelling with the parents on the ship's manifest. However I think that there should have been two children travelling with the parents, either all or part of the way. The ship departed England in Sept 1823 & arrived in Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (aka Tasmania Australia) in April 1824. The ship had pulled in at the Cape of Good Hope for about 6 weeks on its way to VDL. It is possible that the second child was born on board the ship or even at the Cape. My questions are: 1) Am I right in thinking that the Ship's Manifest was written up before the ship departed? 2) If a child was born on board or at a port of call along the way (say Cape of Good Hope), was the manifest updated to show the new passenger? 3) How did the local reporter for the Shipping News section of the newspaper in, say, Hobart Town get the names of the Arrivals from a particular ship? Was he given a copy of the manifest, for instance? Or did he do a head count of his own, asking names as each family group disembarked? Looking forward to your help, Regards, Ailsa