Just bought and installed the Second Trilogy today. I used to play the heck out of these games way back then, going back to the C64 days...

Anyway, my problem is, I remember Ultima V in particular very well, and things aren´t matching up to what I remember. There ought to be several recruitable party members in places that are relative easy to access early on, particularly Jaana hiding in the basement level in Yew, Julia in Minoc (in the poor house, I think) and Gwenno somewhere in Britain - except that they aren´t there.

Is my memory really that bad, or is something wrong with the game?

Your memory is fine. They should be there. Perhaps you are forgetting about the NPC schedules in the game? You may be looking for a companion when they are in bed or at lunch.

That thing was TOTALLY awesome when I first time realized the people are going to sleep at nights, closing their shops and acting like normal people would. Huge, huge thing in Ultima V. Very many modern RPG's should implement this kind of basic schedules to everywhere.

I spent a whole day (game time) in Minoc - no Julia to be found. Jaana ought to spend all her time below ground in Yew, but she isn´t there either.

But Julia is in Empath Abbey and not Minoc. Jaana should be in Yew, though she does tend to move around. Just wait by the beds underground for a while. It's worth noting that sometimes you need to leave and re-enter an "area" to get certain NPCs to appear. This is because schedules seem to work on a per zone (level of a city/castle) basis in that if you know an NPC downstairs heads up to bed at 10:00pm, if you wait by their bed they won't enter the zone and a "refresh" is in order by going up and down a ladder.

Okay, found them. Jaana appears as a minstrel rather than a mage on the map, which threw me off, especially since there´s another minstrel down there that isn´t her.

Thanks for your help.