This website captures details of passengers and crew of the City of Adelaide and provides background and contexts of their lives - whether they were refugees from a European war; victims of the closing of the Cornish copper mines; hopeful migrants wanting to build new lives in a young country.
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Featured article
In 1876, the Nissen Family comprising Hans Christian Nissen, his wife Christine Frederickke Nissen (nee Boisen), and their five children aged 2 to 11, sailed from the port of Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany (previously Denmark), for England. On 25th May 1876, they then left England for Australia in the City of Adelaide.
The family are listed in the passenger list for the voyage. The passengers on this voyage were all assisted migrants from Germany and the passengers were described as labourers - Hans, was a cabinetmaker-joiner. The family regarded themselves as coming from Denmark, however Schleswig, the part of Denmark where that had been living had been annexed as part of Germany in 1864.
The Nissen Family received free passage from the South Australian Govenment to migrate to South Australia. After the voyage, the family kept the Passenger's Contract Ticket issued by the Emigration Agent for South Australia, presumably in London. The ticket ended up in the posessions of Maren Nissen, who was the youngest member of the family who travelled on the City of Adelaide - only two years old in 1876. Maren was a keen genealogist, ahead of her time, and kept many scrapbooks recording her family history. These have been passed down in her family, and the ticket survives to this day.
... that superior tonnage and a greater spread of canvas provided clipper ships with higher speed. In 1876, an Ocean Race from the English Channel to Australia saw the City of Adelaide keep apace with a much larger clipper - the Bundaleer. They kept in sight of each other for almost the entire voyage.
... that during the 1873 voyage of the City of Adelaide to London, the ship drifted so far to the South due to lack of winds that the Captain decided to go the other way around the world ... and the delay meant that heavily pregnant Annie Wilcox gave birth to George Seaborne in Cabin No.2 on 30th January, 1873, just off the Scilly Isles.
... during the 1874 voyage to South Australia, the passengers and crew on the City of Adelaide saw Coggia's Comet.
On the recommendation of his panel of three doctors, Archdeacon William John Woodcock (1808-1868) arranged a voyage to England to recuperate his health. When Archdeacon Woodcock travelled on the City of Adelaide from London to arrive home at North Adelaide in October 1866, he was completing that return trip. He took up his work again, but it was still interrupted by bouts of severe illness, and he died within 18 months.
Photo: State Library of South Australia; SLSA B46868_17
