Ships Index

The Ships Index lists shipping records, logs, and journals held on microfilm in the State Library.  Some records are available online via the Library catalogue or Trove.

The index contains the following information:

• name of ship, chronologically under the name of the ship
• title or description of resource
• dates
• name of series (e.g. AJCP Admiralty and Series number and pages),
• microform call number.
• references to Charles Bateson’s Convict Ships includes references to Tasmanian (TAS) Papers and Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP).

The resources also include a variety of Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP) records.  

AJCP is a collection of historical material relating to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific dating from the 16th century to the 20th century.  AJCP records include Admiralty ships’ logs etc and other sources, such as Miscellaneous (M) Series. The M Series are copies from collections held privately or in record offices other than the Public Records Office (PRO) and Tasmanian Papers (TAS Papers). The TAS Papers are a large collection of official records (1803-1890) relating to the government and administration of Tasmania, which are freely available online via the Library catalogue.

About the index

The Ships Index also known as the Ships Card Index was originally compiled in 1985. The records have been indexed on a selective basis due to the great number of references to various ships.

When to use this index

This resource is useful for researching shipping records and is complemented by the Library's Family History – Shipping and Passenger Research Guide and the Australian Joint Copying Project Research Guide, both of which provide instructions and additional information on locating original shipping records.