Since you'll want to include some rich details to your family immigration story and it's so easy to do now with databases and Internet sites offering pictures for personal use, you can include information about the ship and shipping line and the ports your ancestor encountered. Was the ship one of the largest? What was the décor like? You might find books published that feature photos of the interior. There's lots available about the various shipping lines, such as White Star.
Go to the beginning of the ship manifest for the voyage your ancestor was on and you'll see that it begins with the name of the captain and surgeon and crew. What nationality do their surnames suggest ?
Then first and second class passengers are listed. Do any of the passengers sound familiar to you? You might want to include details such as how many passengers were on the ship and how many were in steerage.
I notice that the steerage passengers often seem to be listed by ethnicity or origin.
You want to go to the beginning of the manifest as well to get the port of departure and date it left. Did it stop in Southhampton, England? Did it sail the Mediterranean before heading across the Atlantic?
As a side note the Queen Mary is available for touring as it is an attraction in Long Beach, Los Angeles, California. I took the tour and the ship was emptied out to be a pitch black empty space below the waterline where the engines and cargo would have been. It was so much smaller than today's ships, which are like cities on the ocean. Scenes from the novel Marjorie Morningstar, by Herman Woulk, which came out in the 1950's, take place on the Queen Mary. It's one of my favorite books. I wanted to see the swimming pool, which was described in a scene in the book. It was a surprisingly small tiled square. I could imagine the water in it following the movement of the ship but not the scene depicted in the book of swimmers using the tiled space as a beach. More surprising to me seeing it, the Queen Mary was larger than the Titanic.
No, I didn't see any ghosts.
C 2021
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