2 August, 1949: the day Joe Walcott sailed to rescue of English football

When the SS Cavina arrived at Avonmouth docks on 2 August 1949 after a 10-day journey from the Caribbean, it brought a diverse human cargo. Among the passengers were a chemist headed for a laboratory in Anglesey, two stowaways and a young RAF serviceman who would go on to become grandfather to the England football star Theo Walcott.

The disembarkation details of Wendell Walcott, called up at 22 from his native Jamaica to serve at an airbase in Weston-Super-Mare, are among more than 18 million records now available on the internet for the first time, providing a comprehensive picture of more than 80 years of immigration to the United Kingdom.

The vast database of digitised passenger arrival lists for every ship arriving at UK ports between 1878 and 1960 from the outposts of the empire offers a unique insight into the origins of Britain's multicultural society and the humble origins of present-day notables whose forebears travelled across the world in search of a new life and employment.

Wendell Walcott, better known as Joe, who served for 34 years in the RAF, is joined on the immigration lists by Julia Mclymont, the mother of the Labour MP Diane Abbott, who arrived at Bristol in 1950 on the SS Ariguani; Muhammed Akbar Khan, an Indian-born Dunkirk veteran arriving in Liverpool in 1957, who became Britain's first Muslim general, and Arthur Wharton, a Ghanaian missionary disembarking in Liverpool in 1882, who became the country's first black professional footballer.

The UK Incoming Passenger Lists, held by the National Archives and transferred to the web in partnership with a commercial genealogy company, are a relic of the era when long-distance travel was by ship, many carrying migrants needed to meet Britain's post-war labour shortfall. Arrivals spoke of cramped on-board conditions, bad food and anxiety about their prospects in their new home. Mr Walcott, who is now 81, was among thousands of young men from the Caribbean transferred to Britain for national service. He later worked as a civilian at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and became mayor of his adopted home town, Carterton. His son, Don, is father of the Arsenal and England striker Theo.

Immigration peaked between 1956 and 1960, when 680,000 men, women and children arrived from outside Europe.

Welcome to Britain: The famous arrivals

The passenger lists also document the arrival by ship of famous travellers and tourists:

*The 15-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, right, is documented as arriving at Southampton in 1947 on board the Queen Mary from New York. Her address was given as the Dorchester Hotel in London.

*A 79-year-old Winston Churchill also disembarked at Southampton from the Queen Elizabeth in 1954 from New York. His address is noted as 10 Downing Street and his profession as Prime Minister.

*Ronald Reagan, then aged 37, disembarked from the MV Britannic at Liverpool in 1948. He gave his profession as actor and his address as the Savoy Hotel on the Strand.

*Other stars included Gloria Swanson, Noel Coward, Dorothy Parker, Norman Mailer, Roger Moore, David Niven and Sir John Mills.