In October 1914, thousands of Victorians embarked from Port Melbourne bound for the battlefields of World War One. By the end of October, 17 troopships had left Victorian shores carrying troops, nurses, technicians, horses, supplies and weaponry. This was Victoria’s First Convoy.

Enormous crowds gathered on the piers, breaking the barricades in an attempt to farewell their loved ones as they sailed away from Victorian shores, bound for Western Australia where they would converge with others to form the Australian and New Zealand First Convoy. As part of the Anzac Centenary program, the Victorian Government has developed a database to allow the embarkation rolls of the first convoy to be searched. You can search by multiple fields, add your own information and upload a picture to help us complete the information captured in the database. Visit and search the First Convoy database.