When Thomas Sinclair brought his family to Western Australia on the Tartar in 1863 he kept a diary of the voyage. The original is in the Esperance Museum, Western Australia. It is a fascinating document because it vividly describes what it must have been like for a family of emigrants travelling on a sailing ship to Australia in the middle of the 19th century.
I have not seen the original document yet and this transcription is done from a digitised copy kindly sent to me by the Museum. Given that the document dates from 1863, it would be in a fragile state. It was originally in a notebook, but someone has torn the individual pages out and the Museum has them housed in separate plastic sleeves. Some of the pages are badly torn and an attempt has been made to repair them with adhesive tape. There are also ballpoint pen marks at various places in the document, perhaps from a previous transcriber.
Sinclair’s writing is neat and mostly clear. He was clearly literate but the document has numerous spelling errors. It was difficult at times to determine whether particular characters were upper or lower case. Where I have been unable to decipher a word I have placed a question mark between parentheses: (?). Where there are characters missing or obscured, I have made a best guess, enclosing the missing letters in square brackets.
The journal ends suddenly. This may be because Thomas reported feeling ill so he stopped writing, or it could be that he grew tired of the task and turned his mind to other things. It may also be because the document itself was a copy he was making after the voyage and he stopped mid-task for some reason. If so, he may have been working from original notes. On the page following the last journal entry there is a poem written by his daughter, Jessie, which laments his death. Could it be that he fell ill and died and therefore could not complete the task of copying out the journal? Unless other notes are found it is probably impossible to know why the journal stopped suddenly. We should be grateful that at least we have 18 pages of entries that describe the migration of the Sinclair family to Western Australia.
We are also fortunate that another passenger recorded the same journey. Reverend Edward Millett and his wife, Janet, were fellow passengers on the Tartar, albeit travelling in cabin class rather than steerage, as the Sinclairs and other migrants were. Janet Millet later published a book – An Australian Parsonage – about here time in Western Australia, and it included her observations about the voyage. They help to round out Thomas Sinclair’s reporting.
Thomas Sinclair’s Journal of a Voyage to Western Australia in 1863
© 2026 Michael Robinson
Non-commercial use permitted with attribution.
Last updated 12 April 2026
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