How to Search for Ship Passengers

Lists of Passengers to America

 

HOW TO ACCESS THE LISTS OF PASSENGERS TO AMERICA IN THE AER DATABASE

REQUIREMENTS FOR ACCESSING THE AER DATABASE

  • Internet Explorer 6 with the Visual Basic automation and the vector graphics components (if these components are not installed, the system will ask whether you want to install them the first time the database is accessed; Internet Explorer 6 MUST be installed in order to access to the system).
  • Flash player (I could not access the system until I installed it).
  • In addition, you need to register into the system.

TO REGISTER INTO AER

  1. Go to the page http://aer.mcu.es/sgae/index_aer.jsp
  2. Click the button Alta de usuario (New User).
  3. Fill the different fields, including Usuario (User) and Contraseña (Password).
  4. Click the Guardar (Save) button.
  5. Click the Salir (Exit) button.

FIRST TIME ACCESS TO THE AER DATABASE

(You must be registered in the system)

  1. To access AER, go to the page http://aer.mcu.es/sgae/index_aer.jsp
  2. Type your username and password in the fields Usuario and Contraseña, respectively.
  3. Click the button Aceptar (Accept).
  4. Select the menu option Búsqueda/Temas de búsqueda (Search/Search Topics).
  5. Click the link Nuevo tema (New Topic), located on the top right part of the screen.
  6. Type a text describing your interests (e.g. "History" or "Spanish Genealogy") in the field Título (Title).
  7. Click the button Guardar (Save).
  8. Click the button Volver (Go back).
  9. In the screen Temas de consulta (Search topics), press over the magnifying glass icon located to the left of the search topic you typed.
  10. When the form titled Criterios de búsqueda (Search criteria) appears, press the link "Búsqueda por signatura" (Reference search).
  11. Type the text "CONTRATACION,S.42" in the field Signatura incompleta (Incomplete reference).
  12. Click the button Buscar (Search) located to the right, in the very same line.
  13. The screen Resultado de la búsqueda (Search results) will appear, showing three references. The first reference is just the catalogue grouping of the other two. The third reference contains the actual passenger lists, with the original image of the document. Unfortunately, these lists are not indexed, so you can not perform direct searches in them. However, the second reference whose title is "Informaciones y licencias de pasajeros a Indias" (Info and licenses of the passengers to America) contains a subset of the passengers (about 5% of the total) for whom there exists a full dossier. These passengers are indexed, so if you are lucky maybe you can find an ancestor there. Click over this reference.
  14. The descriptive screen will appear. Click the tab titled "Contiene" (Contents). The list of volumes will appear, showing the first 10 volumes.
  15. Clicking over one of the volumes will bring up another descriptive screen, showing the years corresponding to that volume. Click the tab titled "Contiene" (Contents). This way you will access the list of passengers contained in that volume; the screen shows initially the first ten passengers.
  16. Click over one of the passengers. Another descriptive screen will be shown, with the basic information about the passenger. To the right of the title of the tab named "Detalle" (Details) there will be an icon representing a camera. Clicking over it, the graphics program used to view the digitized document will be started (it can take a while). The first time you click the camera icon, Internet Explorer may ask you whether you want to install two graphics complements (which are necessary to view the documents). After installing one of the complements it may be necessary to restart the system.

TO ACCESS THE AER DATABASE THE NEXT TIME

Follow the same procedure, just skipping steps 6 to 8.

TO LOCATE A CONCRETE PASSENGER (IF THERE IS A DOSSIER FOR HIM)

  1. To access AER, go to the page http://aer.mcu.es/sgae/index_aer.jsp
  2. Type your username and password in the fields Usuario and Contraseña, respectively.
  3. Click the button Aceptar (Accept).
  4. Select the menu option Búsqueda/Temas de búsqueda (Search/Search Topics).
  5. In the screen Temas de consulta (Search topics), press over the magnifying glass icon located to the left of your search topic.
  6. When the form titled Criterios de búsqueda (Search criteria) appears, press the link "Otros criterios de búsqueda" (Other search criteria) located at the top right corner of the screen.
  7. Type the text "licencia" (license) in the field Contenido (Content), at the bottom of the screen.
  8. Type the desired surname (without accents) in the field Texto General (General text), located at the top of the screen.
  9. Type again the surname in the field "Término" (search term) of the section "Indices" (indexes).
  10. Press the button labeled Buscar.
  11. The existing dossiers for that surname will appear.

VIEWING THE DIGITIZED DOCUMENTS

The graphics program has several options for zooming in and out, rotating the image and applying effects. The effects are applied selecting the appropriate effect in the drop-down list and then clicking one of the three buttons located to the right of the list; those buttons apply the corresponding effect with low, medium, and high intensity (respectively).

In the left part of the screen you will find a pane which allows you to directly navigate to a selected page within the document.

To exit the graphics program, just close the window.