About compiling ship data and this encyclopedia

What kind of ships are covered?

Certain you have noticed that we have covered not only tall ships. There is no exact rule what ships are added to this encyclopedia. One condition is that the ship should has sails or at least should has been a sailing ship in former times. We focus to those sailing ships still sailing, although you can find here some well-known ships that don't exist anymore. You can find here sailing ships, traditional sailing ships, sail training ships, vessels, museum ships, newly built and veteran sailing ships, replicas and classic yachts. Another condition is that a minimum of technical specification or historical information about the ship should be available.

Technical data

Name:	Ship's name, as possible in the language of the registered country or in English, sometimes with registration numbers and additionals
Former 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 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 ship:	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 last over years the date of the launch is covered.
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 not exactly known what length is covered (in metres)
Breadth:	Max. breadth of the ship (in metres)
Draught:	The draught (in metres)
Sail area:	Max. sail area (in square metres)
Ship's hull:	Material of the ship's hull, we only distinguish between steel, wooden hulls, beton and plastics.
Power:	Power of the ship's engine (in hp)
Engine:	Kind of engine

A distortion 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 measurements 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 worse 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 ship

In this section you can find photos of the ship, as possible with all sails up or photos of ship's details. We cover 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 database. Photos are ordered by date.

Portrait of the ship

In this section the history of the ship is covered 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

Contact over

This section contains contact addresses of charter firms, the official contact address of the ship or of the owner, if this was not prohibited by them. Use this contact addresses to get more and detailed information about the ship, charter and sailing on board.

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 it was added to the database or major changes happened. We give a short abstract of the resource and in what languages information about the 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".

Contact addresses are subject to many changes. All addresses are given without guarantee.

Sailing list

In this section one can find actual sailing schedules of the ship. The source of this information is the Project Office "Hanse Sail" Rostock and information by the owners or operators. The sailing list is subject to change. Often there are discount prices for youth, groups and members of non-profit organizations supporting sailing ships. Use the given contact addresses to get more information.

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:

Not all references listed here were read or used to generate the information about the ship.

Sources

One main source of this compilation of data 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, ship profiles, photos and contact addresse were changed and added. Main changes are reported in the news section 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 we work hard to get information from save sources we often used secondary sources too. We 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 became old sometimes rather fast. In addition our 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 we 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 us with your hints about known bugs or ask for detailed information. We look forward to your feedback.

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