Writing in her shipboard diary in 1839, the nineteen-year-old Eliza Darvall notes the appearance of the first issue of a shipboard newspaper. ‘The first paper was published today,’ she writes, ‘and received with great applause, Mr. Docker's leading article being excellent.’ Her sister, Emily Darvall, who was older than her by two years, makes a similar note in her diary: ‘This morning appeared at breakfast the first number of the “Alfred” edited by Mr. Docker, and it created much interest. Although we had only two days [sic] notice, everybody had contributed and indeed, many papers were omitted for want of room.’ The shipboard newspaper that the Darvall sisters write of, the Alfred, is named after the ship on which they and their family were sailing out to Sydney. The extent of the textual legacy of the voyage, in the form of the two Darvall sisters’ shipboard diaries, the shipboard newspaper and the passenger list, is an extremely rare occurrence. It may be due to the social prominence of the Darvall family. The sisters’ father, Major Edward Darvall, had connections with the East India Company; their elder brother, John, became a very important barrister and politician in New South Wales and was granted a knighthood; and Emily herself became a poet of some importance in her later years. Emily's comment on submissions being omitted for want of room speaks of the enthusiasm that people on board the ship had for making the periodical. This would be sustained over the next twelve weeks, as emigrants produced an issue of the Alfred each Saturday during the voyage.

In 1868, another ship by the name of True Briton set sail from Kent for Melbourne. Unlike the voyage of the Alfred, no supporting material in the form of diaries, passenger lists or other official documentation relating to the voyage survives. The lone document that has survived is the eleven weekly runs of the shipboard newspaper, the Open Sea, from which we can surmise the minimum length of voyage. As with the Alfred, the Open Sea was a collaborative endeavour, produced by emigrants during the journey. The production of shipboard newspapers was a popular form of entertainment on the long voyage to the Antipodes.