About the collected data
Technical data
| Name: | The ship's name, as possible in the language of the registered country or in English, sometimes with registration numbers and additionals |
| Ex-names: | The ex-names of the sailing ship, not in their chronological order, no multiple enumeration, sometimes with registration numbers and additionals |
| Registered port: | The registered port of the sailing ship |
| Base port: | The port used as base port for sailing trips, if it differs from the registered port |
| Nation: | The nation or flag that the sailing ship flies, (country of the registered port) |
| Type of rigging: | The type of the rigging of the sailing ship. We intend to revise this section in the future. |
| Type of the ship | The ship's type. We intend to revise this section in the future. |
| Year built: | Year when the ships was built, sometimes the year when it was restored; If the building of the year lasts over years the date of the launch is recorded. |
| Yard: | The shipyard, sometimes the yard where the ship was restored |
| Overall length: | The overall lenght including the bowsprit (in metres) |
| Length (hull): | Length of the hull (in metres) |
| Length: | Length, if from the source it is not exactly known what length is recorded (in metres) |
| Breadth: | The max. breadth of the ship (in metres) |
| Draught: | The draught (in metres) |
| Sail area: | The max. sail area (in square metres) |
| Ship's hull: | Material of the ship's hull; We only distinguish between iron/steel, wooden hulls, beton and plastics. |
| Power: | Power of the ship's engine (in hp) |
| Engine: | The kind of engine |
A falsification of the data is possible because of:
- differencies or unclearness about valid definitions,
for instance in the case of the different kind of lengths in some of the used sources it is not clear which length is measured there, length overall, length of the hull, length on the waterline (LWL), length on deck (LOD), including or excluding the bowsprit and so on. - errors created by the conversions and rounding of values,
The units of measure are not internationally unique, for instance 978 m² get rounded to 1000 m² which then get converted as 10764 ft² which are then quoted rounded as 11,000 ft² and suddenly the sail area becomes 1022 m²... But that's not the worst of it: is the original sail area 'plain sail' or all on, including the master's wife's bloomers set flying above the main stargazer? Some owners quote the acreage of their wardrobe, including sails that are never set at the same time.
Photos of the sailing ship
In this section you can find photos of the sailing ship, as possible with all sails up or photos of ship's details. We record the source and author of the photo and when and where it was taken. We only use those photos for which the author gave us the copyright to show them in the data collection. Photos are ordered by date.
Videos with the sailing ship
This section shows videos with the ship. From the description of the video you can see when and where the recordings were made. Videos are only used with the permission of the author. The videos are sorted in the chronological order of the recordings.
Portrait of the sailing ship
In this section the history of the ship is recorded in basic and itemized style. Particulary interesting are:
- the building and launching of the ship
- its use and remaining over the years
- important voyages
- owners and change of owners including changes of the ship's name and registered port or flag
- details of the construction and design including changes
- participation in sailing events and awards
Last tracked position of the sailing ship
This section shows a map with the last recorded position of the sailing ship. Information from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) is used, which are recorded by various service providers. The map is displayed with the approval of the AIS service provider.
Contact
We give the links to websites of and about the ship and other valuable resources in the web. These links are given together with the date when they were added to the database or major changes happened. We give a short abstract of the resource and in what languages information about the sailing ship are available here. The links are automatically checked once a month. Websites added to the index within the last two months are marked with "new". Websites down during the last check are marked with "down".
Literature for further reading
Recently we started to cover and list literature resources for further reading. This reference list is not exhaustive yet. Beside the exact literature reference small icons symbolize what kind of information a distinct reference covers. The meaning of these icons are:
-
source with technical data
source with picture
source with history
source with contact address
Please note that not all references listed here were read or used to generate the information about the ship.
About collecting of data of sailing ships
What kind of sailing ships are recorded?
There is no exact guideline what ships are added to this data collection. A condition is that the ship should have sails or at least should have been a sailing ship in former times. We focus on those sailing ships still sailing, although you can find here some well-known ships that don't exist anymore. Another condition is that a minimum of technical specification or historical information about the ship should be available.
Which sources I have used?
The first source of this data collection was the CD-ROM "Old time sailing ships". During the life of this website the database increased very much
and became more consistent. Uncount data records, ship profiles, photos and information were changed and added.
Main changes are reported in the RSS-Feed of this website.
Another imported source for this database are websites, linked in the contact section, comparisons with other sources and lots of hints of other friends of sailing ships.
Thank you very much to all contributors. Although I work hard to get information from save sources I have often used secondary sources too.
I can't guarantee for all the information given at this website. The technical specification of a ship in different sources varies often in a wide rage. This is the known problem of
conflicting resources. Sources become old sometimes rather fast. In addition my own compiling is not free of errors and misunderstandings.
For instance sometimes ships are re-engined. Say in 1990. With luck a reference published in 1991 might mention the new engine type and power but someone else publishing data in 1992 might be
unaware of this and quote the old engine. So when you have no other info, do you believe the 1991 info or the more recent one? So there are sometimes three, four or five different data sets
for one and the same ship...
Concluding...
As described above the compiling of ship data can be seen as a puzzle with countless pieces.
Because of the shown problems I point out here that this database will never be complete, consistent, exhaustive and fully correct. So please be crucial of all information given here.
Help me with your hints about known bugs or ask for detailed information. I look forward to your feedback.