I’m still stuck on finding the sea voyages of several members of my family, who sneak out of Hong Kong and sneak back again on wily routes, it seems. If I were able to check every single arrival and departures list in the newspapers, I would find them, but apart from the passenger lists on Ancestry.com I’m several voyages short and wonder if I can once more ask for help, in case anyone is better at newspaper searches than me (surely!), or can access websites that I can’t. I think the route via Kobe was sometimes used.
Among those I’m missing:
1895 Charles Warren aged 23 from Cape of Good Hope to Hong Kong
1915 Miss Evelyn Warren (aged 14) Hong Kong to England – surely not alone.
1920-1922 Hannah Mabel Warren aged 50-52 to London (although a Mabel Warren sails from Shanghai to London 3 July 1922 and this might be her)
(Iris Warnes, (b. 1906) Hannah’s niece, is with her in London, but looking older than she would be at the above dates.)
1927 Charles Reginald Warren (aged 18) Hong Kong to Colombo.
1928 Arthur Cecil Warren (aged 22) – Hong Kong to England for medical treatment twice.
1928 Mr & Mrs Warren and family – Hong Kong to England on leave – Leslie, Cicely, Geoffrey and Diana.
What I already have is:
1915 May 25. Hannah Mabel Warren. Passenger List Hongkong to Victoria & Vancouver, British Columbia – (daughter Evelyn not listed)
1915 June 16 Hannah Warren sails from Montreal, Quebec to London.
1916 October Hannah Warren returns to Hong Kong.
1923 July 7. Hannah Warren leaves London for Hong Kong (When did she arrive?)
1928 November 10 Mr & Mrs Leslie Warren and family leave England for Hong Kong, possibly with Arthur. They return on the Aeneas – Blue Funnel Line.
Travelling from Hong Kong to Britain during WWI
During the war, there was much concern about the threat to shipping from German surface raiders in the Indian Ocean and from German submarines in the Mediterranean and in the Channel approaches to southern Britain, but the North Atlantic was relatively safer as the German fleet never ventured out of its home ports after the Battle of Jutland. Several shipping lines offered sailings from Hong Kong to Europe, via north America, as a package travelling either directly to New York (e.g. via San Francisco and the Panama Canal) to connect with a trans-Atlantic sailing, or including sailing to the west coast of Canada or the U.S.A. and overland travel to the east coast to make the connection. It took about 3 weeks to the west coast, usually via Shanghai and Japan, or via Manila. The details of sailings and passenger lists that were published in the Hong Kong newspapers seem to have been curtailed during the war, but an on line search might reveal some details.
For wartime travellers from Hong Kong to Britain, try first checking the Canadian immigration records that were recently released online.
One of my relatives came home to Britain from Hong on furlough (long leave) during the war. I recently found a record of him arriving in Victoria, British Columbia on a ship from Yokahama in Japan, presumably having first taken ship from Hong Kong to Japan. From Victoria he seems to have taken about three weeks to cross north America (presumably by train from one of the mainland ports such as Vancouver or Seattle) and then took another ship from New York that arrived in Liverpool. There may be a record of his U.S. border crossing that I have not yet found online.
Canadian Immigration Records
Thank you for the suggestion of Canadian immigration records, imsij. I wouldn't have thought of that.