Hello Pam,
I read with interest the story about the ill-fated passenger ship LORD
BROUGHAM, which left Hamburg on 15 October 1867 and arrived in New York on
6 December 1867. The Hamburg Passenger List did not indicate as having
stopped at another port before going to the open sea, so, yes, 50 days on
the ocean is a rather long time but considering the gales of November it is
not unusual. I think the longest recorded ocean voyage from Bremen to NY
was 120 days.
Looking at the great number of immigrants that died on that trip, I would
say that this was the voyage from hell. If we could only read some of the
letters of dispair that were most assuredly sent to their loved ones back
home following this horrible ordeal.
I have checked both the Hamburg Departure PL and the New York Arrival PL
and found considerable differences. Using the WILKE family as an example,
here is what is found on the Hamburg PL:
WILCKE, Carl Hch., Laborer, age 37 (note spelling of surname and first)
WILCKE, Marie, wife, age 36 (note age difference)
WILCKE, Marie, daughter, age 9 (note age difference)
WILCKE, Johanne, daughter, age 5
WILCKE, Fredericke, daughter, age 3/4
Place of birth, residence and country:
all from BROENKOW, Prussia.
Compare this with what's on the New York Arrival List:
WILKE, J H, age 37, farmer, from Germany
WILKE, Maria, age 31 (died)
WILKE, Maria, age 7
WILKE, Joh'e, age 5
WILKE, Fred'ke age 9 months.
What has me puzzled is, how did the scribe come up with J H for Carl
Heinrich Wilcke's first name? In fact I noticed throughout the NY passenger
list, nearly all heads of family were identified only by an initial,
usually not even the correct one either when compared to the Hamburg List.
And what about leaving off all of the hometowns? On the Hamburg PL, there
is a hometown listed for each family!
What list was the scribe working from? It eems to me he just took it upon
himself to change their names; On passenger Johann Baase, he must have felt
that one 'a' was enough changing his name to BASE then gave him the
initials J.A.
Since the Hamburg PL was created using each passenger's travel documents,
it would seem logical that the same documents were submitted to US customs
upon arrival in NY. I sure wish someone could shed some light on this
subject to help me understand how things were handled at arrival in NY.
When adding transcription errors to many of the already misspelled surnames
on the New York List, [e.g. BASE instead of BAASE, or WOLGART instead of
WOLGAST, and LEWERENY instead of LEWERENZ] then we need not wonder why
researchers have such a hard time locating their ancestors on passenger
ship lists.
Inquiring mind wants to know.
Ursula
Pam Sullivan wrote: