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I have an arrival record for my wife's grandmother.

She and her mother/brother/sister arrived in Halifax, Canada on the "SS Canada" in February 1921. The record said that the ship departed from Liverpool, England.

I'm trying to find the departure records from Liverpool. I found the FamilySearch collection Departures from the Liverpool Office 1914-1923, but so far I haven't found the SS Canada in that collection.

Any ideas on where I can find the departure information? I'm hoping that I can find where (in Poland) they came from originally, and possibly find her father, who probably came the same way a couple of years previously.

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    Ancestry have this collection UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 that may help it has over 23 million records in it.
    – Colin
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 5:50

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Ancestry has a Collection of UK Outward Passenger Lists 1890-1960 which include "Transmigrants" departures from Liverpool in 1921, including the SS Canada. You can search by departure year and place and ship name. Findmypast has the same dataset. If you don't have a subscription to Ancestry it's worth looking out for 'free weekends'.

It's very likely that when you find your ancestors, the passenger list will show that they entered England at Hull (from where they would have got a train to Liverpool to travel onward across the Atlantic). The list will usually show the ship they arrived in at Hull.

Arrivals in England from Europe were not usually recorded according to the National Archives:

UK passenger lists do not record travel within Europe unless a ship called at more than one European port before travelling further afield.

so your next step will be to look for the passenger list on departure of the ship that brought them to Hull.

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  • Thanks! I found them in the outward Passenger lists. It says that they came from Poland (natch), entered the UK at "Dover" on the ship "Belgian Mail Packet". Now to figure out how to backtrack that.
    – Marshall Clow
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 13:54
  • @MarshallClow I believe the Belgian Mail Packet departed from Ostend.
    – user6485
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 13:59
  • arch.arch.be/index.php?l=en might help @MarshallClow
    – user6485
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 14:09
  • Also avotaynuonline.com/2015/08/…
    – user6485
    Commented Jun 24, 2019 at 14:23
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    @MarshallClow Write a new Q and I'll take a crack at it. First thing I'd look for is to see what companies ran those 'mail packet' ships. Newspaper research would probably turn that up if you don't have any clues in your passenger list.
    – Jan Murphy ♦
    Commented Jun 26, 2019 at 2:36

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