For 23 years the City of Adelaide brought large numbers of British and German migrants to the fledgling colony of South Australia. It is calculated that today approximately a quarter of a million South Australians, or one in five, can trace an ancestor that migrated, or was a passenger, on the City of Adelaide.
Are you one?
Passengers
From the summary of the voyages from England to South Australia, it is known that at least 889 passengers were ‘landed safely’ from the City of Adelaide at Port Adelaide over 23 years.
It is recognised that this list is incomplete and additional names remain to be discovered. On the other hand, there were also passengers who did not stay – such as the Governor of WA’s entourage, and Captain Alston’s wife and child who lived on board.
On balance, it is conservative to use the figure of 889 passengers who came to live in South Australia.
Households
With reasonable certainty, it has been possible to identify 345 of the 889 City of Adelaide passengers (a very good sample) from their subsequent appearance within the South Australian Births, Marriages and Deaths Registrations.
Each unmarried young passenger represents a potential household and, to avoid a distortion of statistics, each married couple arriving has to be classified as one household.
Those 345 passengers were found to represent 295 households.
Generations
Of course their SA descendants have been born continuously over the subsequent century and a half, but estimating their numbers can be simplified by visualising each period of 25 years as a ‘generation’.
- 1835-1859 : the generation of parents who brought an established family to SA on the ship
- 1860-1884 : their children and the young single people who arrived on the City of Adelaide
- 1885-1909 : the first generation born in SA
- 1910-1934 : their children
- 1935-1959 : their grandchildren *
- 1960-1984 : their great-grandchildren *
- 1985-2009 : their great-great-grandchildren *
* These last three generations are living today.
Of the 295 households identified, 12 were classified as including parents of the earliest generation. Deducting their children’s potential households left 271 households in that next generation.
Extrapolating these findings to all 889 passengers results in an estimation of
31 households in the 1835-1859 ‘generation’, and
697 households in the 1860-1884 ‘generation’ (excluding the children of the 31 households in the previous generation).
Crude Birth Rates
Among the Historical Population data of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Table 42 includes the Crude Birth Rate per thousand people in South Australia for each year from 1860 to 2004. The ABS also relates the Crude Birth Rate to the Average Birth per Woman over her life-time.
Averaging the Crude Birth Rate over each ‘generation band’ of 25 years, and expressing this as the Average Birth per Woman (ie per household) produces the following results:
| Average Crude Birth Rate per 1000 | Avge Birth per Woman (Household) | |
| 1860-1884 | 39.6 | 5.4 |
| 1885-1909 | 29.0 | 4.0 |
| 1910-1934 | 22.5 | 3.1 |
| 1935-1959 | 20.9 | 2.9 |
| 1960-1984 | 17.5 | 2.4 |
| 1985-2009 | 12.8 | 1.8 |
Descendants
Statistically, the number of descendants in each subsequent generation from each household within the 1835-1859 band is:
| Average Birth per Household | No. of Descendants | Cumulative Total Descendants | Cumulative Total Descendants Alive Today | |
| 1860-1884 | 5.4 | 5.4 | 5.4 | |
| 1885-1909 | 4.0 | 21.6 | 27.0 | |
| 1910-1934 | 3.1 | 67.0 | 94.0 | |
| 1935-1959 | 2.9 | 194.2 | 288.1 | 194.2 |
| 1960-1984 | 2.4 | 466.0 | 754.2 | 660.2 |
| 1985-2009 | 1.8 | 838.9 | 1593.1 | 1499.1 |
From each household within the next generation (1860-1884), the number of descendants by generation is:
| Average Birth per Household | No. of Descendants | Cumulative Total Descendants | Cumulative Total Descendants Alive Today | |
| 1885-1909 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 4.0 | |
| 1910-1934 | 3.1 | 12.4 | 16.4 | |
| 1935-1959 | 2.9 | 36.0 | 52.4 | 36.0 |
| 1960-1984 | 2.4 | 86.4 | 138.8 | 122.4 |
| 1985-2009 | 1.8 | 155.5 | 294.3 | 277.9 |
| Adding the descendants from those two passenger generations: | 31 x 1593 = | 49,386 |
| 697 x 294 = | 205,127 | |
| Estimated total descendants from City of Adelaide passengers: | 254,513 | |
| Assuming the last three descendant generations are still alive: | 31 x 1499 = | 46,472 |
| 697 x 278 = | 193,696 | |
| Estimated living descendants from City of Adelaide passengers: | 240,168 | |
Thus today approximately a quarter of a million South Australians, or one in five, can trace an ancestor that migrated, or was a passenger, on the City of Adelaide. Perhaps you are one? If you know the surname of your ancestors that migrated to South Australia between 1864 and 1887, you may be able to trace them. Please contact us using the forum if you need assistance.
Research and calculation: Ron Roberts, Adelaide.
