Welcome  

What Is ? 

It is he name of my data bank including (almost) all seagoing merchant ships of more than 1.000 RT (registered tonnage) launched since 1983 as well as the majority of the passenger liners,  ferries and VLCC’s (very large crude carriers) still going. 

This data bank has been online since the end of 2008 and can be tested now, also with its demo-version, for a period of 30 days free of charge. This absolutely ad free data bank is accessible for everybody for a fee of 24,00 €. There is also the option to load down the data like before and to store and evaluate them on your own computer.

Access to the network is free of charge for „active” participants. „Active” participants are those who provide links to their photos or other information or who want to participate in updating the data. They will receive administrator rights for the purpose of keeping this data bank as up to date as possible.

If you have questions, suggestions or requests please do not hesitate to contact me per e-mail. Any contribution will be welcome. 

is more than just a data bank

This data bank a.o. refers to photos of various photographers in the worldwide web and to publications in books and journals. It includes e.g. more than 5.700 references to photos available in a special photo finder of the journal “Marine News” and free of charge for members of the World Ship Society (Info).

Furthermore thousands of links are being generated for additional information and photos at the „classics“:

       Fakta om Fartyg by Micke Asklander (passenger liners and ferries),      

           carcarrier by Marion and Helge Barth (vehicle transporters), and                    

        Containership-Info by Jan Svendsen & Jan Tiedemann (containerships). 

To some extent there are also links to:

       Schweizer Hochseeschifffahrt by Peter Bichsel / Markus Berger / Daniel Trösch 

       Brazilian Merchant Ships by Marcelo Lopes and Josè da Silva

       Auke Visser's International Super Tankers

There are more links to Vesseltrecker.com, Marinetraffic, Sailwx and to the Miramar Ship Index concerning the shown ships. Obviously you can also look up name and IMO number in Google and for photos in Shipspotting.com. 

In the cases mentioned above search is made directly, i.e. without accessing the internet site before.

Thanks to the special filing system for ship photos you can find, show and print any photo either via its photographer or her name no matter whether in a home page or in a web album. This means that as a photographer you have to deal only with your photo and the hyperlink to it. There is no need to enter ship data like IMO number etc..  I order to demonstrate how even ship photos without any comments will be provided with data the demo-version has special links to photos by Andreas Spörri (Switzerland) und Roberto Smera (Brasilia).   

Such photographers will obviously be given access to  free of charge.

Also the data bank includes numerous links to photographers, shipyards, shipping companies, webcams on ships etc., and online to data banks which are to some extent accessible from the program.

A demo version explaining how the system works is available for download here.

History and Development

-  starting in 1965 collection of ship data and photos on data sheets;

-  in 1976 first consideration regarding computerisation;

-  starting in 1990 collection of new data in a data bank;

-  in 1993 first publication as SHIP-PC with own program

   (7.000 ships with 10.000 names).

-  in 2000 database 16.000 ships with 28.000 names. Start of development of a       program for

        - in 2010 – database 27.000 ships with more than 55.000 names. 

    Updating of entire database online. 

Current Status 

Access to demo version can be made free of charge (Download) and allows access to test - net for 30 days. Computer with the operating system Windows XP Service Pack >= 2 and MS-Office version >= 2003 do not require any installation for normal operation, as the system includes all required components already. In order to access - net the MySQL-ODBC-driver should be installed. In case it is not present in your system it can be loaded down here and be installed easily.

In case it does not work or you have different operating systems like Win 98, Me, NT or 2000 you will need the installation package (ca. 11 MB) to be found on the download page as well.

This online version is still in its test phase. Therefore please make allowances, if the program and the server access appear to be not quite mature. In spite of this the whole data inventory will be updated online only. The complete data inventory may be loaded down at any time fore the purpose of a rapid evaluation of data volumes gained from search results. This service is available free of charge for all clients having acquired the full version and for all ship photographers with released access.