posted 04-15-2007 01:15 AM                    

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Titanic's passenger list goes online

Sat Apr 14, 2007 8:28AM EDT
By Avril Ormsby

LONDON (Reuters) - The names, ages and professions of passengers listed on the Titanic's fateful journey have gone online for the first time, 95 years after the luxury ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage.

Dozens of pages featuring the original handwritten passenger list are available, revealing the cabin class of passengers.

They poignantly show the emigration plans of many hopefuls setting sail from Southampton for a new life in America in 1912.

The White Star liner, touted as "unsinkable", left port on April 10, only to sink after hitting an iceberg, with the loss of 1,523 lives.

Among the passengers, for example, was George Mackay, a 20-year-old butler from Scotland travelling third class and hoping to start a new life in America.

In first class the Countess of Rothes is recorded as travelling with her cousin Gladys Cherry and her personal maid Roberta Maioni. They survived after being picked up by the ship Carpathia.

The list, which is available for free for one week at findmypast.com, could help genealogists trace family members. Previously, the list could only be seen at the National Archives in Kew, southwest London.

Findmypast is an online research site that provides information on genealogy.

The online listing coincides with a commemoration service to be held in the British port of Southampton on Sunday for the hundreds of residents who took the voyage as either passengers or crew and who died when the Titanic went down mid Atlantic.

The list completes the set of passengers lists for the ships leaving the UK during the decade between 1910 and 1919.

A spokesman for findmypast said the lists were considered so high-profile by the National Archives that they qualified for the same level of security as Henry VIII's divorce papers and the Domesday Book and could only be consulted under supervision.

He said it also gives details of the lucky few who narrowly escaped the fate of the other passengers when they disembarked from the ship in France.

The original documents also show that some passengers who intended to board at Queenstown (Cobh in County Cork) did not actually embark, despite having purchased tickets, he said.

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