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United States Navy

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs.html/ and http://hazegray.org/danfs/

The public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships is the primary source for information about pre-Cold War United States Navy ships. Its coverage from the Cold War onward has been poor, but improvement efforts are underway.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/DANFS conversions for tips on turning DANFS info into a good Wikipedia article. If you use DANFS, add ((DANFS)) to the article's References section.

http://www.nvr.navy.mil

The Naval Vessel Register is a public domain resource for ships currently in commission and some recently retired ones.

http://www.navsource.org

NavSource is a good source of pictures but not all have Wikipedia-compliant copyrights.

http://combatindex.com/combatindex.html

Combat Index is another good source of pictures; pages on individual ships often contain photographs attributed to the US Navy, which makes them suitable for use on Wikipedia.

http://www.marad.dot.gov/sh/ShipHistory/ShipList

The Maritime Administration maintains the Reserve Fleet and handles the disposal of ships. The site is particularly useful for information about scrapping and disposal, as well as ships loaned or sold out of service. (This replaced the defunct PMARS site with similar data, including the card images, but not the artifact images).

http://www.ncts.navy.mil/nol/

• Navy On-Line lists nearly every U.S. Navy official and unofficial web site

Ship types

• The United States Submarine Veterans Inc. is primarily a community of submariners, but has some information on submarines "on eternal patrol;" i.e., lost.
• Destroyers OnLine - to collect, preserve and display historical information about the ships, their crews and the U.S. Navy. Includes destroyers, escorts, and frigates; destroyer classes; alphabetical list; links; glossary, bibliography. Individual ship profiles may include history, photos, crew locator, and email from crewmembers.

Royal Navy

• The maintainer of the Web site Ships of the Old Navy ( http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/INTRO.HTM ), which is devoted primarily to Napoleonic-era ships, has given Wikipedia permission to use any of his work. The Epopt has his statement of permission on file. The original site is no longer active, however its contents are available here.
• The maintainer of the Web site Navyphotos has given permission for materials from his site to be used, with the stipulation that a link and/or acknowledgement is requested. David Newton has the email giving permission. This permission is not compliant with Wikipedia's licensing requirements. New images should not be uploaded from this site.
• Her Majesty's Stationery Office has denied Wikipedia permission to copy anything under Crown Copyright. This includes the original imprints of ships' badges.
• Imperial War Museum has lots of images of Royal Navy ships. Crown Copyright expires after 50 years so most all World War I and II ship photos can be used.
• The London Gazette may prove useful for researching Royal Navy ships from 1665.

Soviet and Russian Navies

• The copyright statement on the Web pages of the Bellona Foundation ( http://www.bellona.no/ ) states "(c) BELLONA - Reuse and reprint recommended provided source is stated." That requirement is compatible with the GFDL's requirement that history be maintained, so their excellent material may be used without restriction.

French Marine Nationale

• http://www.netmarine.net/ authorisation is given by the team of "NetMarine" to use their photographs. Therefore, you can use the images of
  • JM. Roche
  • G. Rueda
  • F. Dubey
  • Y. Le Bris
  • A. Morcello.

Note that other images are likely to be copyrighted by the Marine Nationale and that no special authorisation has been granted as for now.

• Service Historique de la Marine
• Musée National de la Marine
• Shipscribe - French Navy ships 1816-59

Germany

Kriegsmarine

See also

• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Italy, 8 December 1941-30 June 1942
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Italy, 1 July 1942-31 December 1942
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Italy, 1 January 1943-30 June 1943

• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Norway, 8 January 1943 - 30 June 1943
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Norway, 1 July - 31 August 1943
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Norway, 1 September-15 October 1943
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Norway, 16 October-31 December 1943
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Norway, 1 January-31 March 1944
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Norway 16 May-15 July 1944
• War Diary of Captain U-Boats, Norway, 1 August-15 September 1944 and 1-15 October 1944

• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 16 December 1941 - 15 May 1942
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 16 May 1942 - 31 May 1942
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 1 June 1942 - 30 June 1942
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 1 October 1942 - 31 December 1942
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 1 January 1943 - 31 March 1943
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 1 April 1943 - 30 April 1943
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 16 May 1943 - 31 May 1943
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 1 September 1943 - 30 September 1943
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 1 October 1943 - 31 October 1943
• War Diary of Admiral, Black Sea, 1 November 1943 - 30 November 1943

• Log of "Ship 16" (Atlantis)

Netherlands

Royal Netherlands Navy

Colonial report by year

Overview of warships in the Dutch East Indies (in Dutch)

State budget

Explanatory note (in Dutch)

General overview of Dutch warships (in Dutch)

Norway

• Merchant Fleet 1939-1945

Royal Norwegian Navy

• Facts & Figures: The Royal Norwegian Navy
• (in Norwegian)List of ships built by the main shipyard in Horten
• (in Norwegian)Norwegian Submarine flotilla history
• (in Norwegian)Befalsbladet 1/2004
• (in Norwegian)Royal Norwegian Navy history page
• (in Norwegian)Another Royal Norwegian Navy History page
• (in Norwegian)Royal Norwegian Navy Museum web page at mil.no

Royal Australian Navy

• The Royal Australian Navy's Sea Power Centre has histories of all the former ships of the Royal Australian Navy. Note that these histories are covered by copyright and cannot be reproduced on Wikipedia without the permission of the RAN.
• The Australian War Memorial has photos of most RAN ships in its Collections Database. Photos taken prior to the early 1950s which have a copyright status of 'clear'. Permission must be obtained before reproducing more recent photos. The AWM also sells higher resolution versions of the photos in the database.
• The AWM also has the official histories of the RAN in WW1 and WW2 available online. Note that the AWM still holds the copyright to these publications and permission must be obtained before any elements of them are reproduced.

Other Navies

• Class listing of every ship in Brazilian service, past and present [1], in Portuguese. Probably reliable, as The ed17 has a 2012 academically published book that uses it as a reference.
• Official site of the Hellenic Navy [2] (Greek Navy)
• The History of Turkish Submarines ( http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Bunker/7704/index.html ) is a privately maintained website, well-organized, with good information. Wikipedia has no permission to copy; all rights are reserved.
• The Submarines of the Royal Netherlands Navy ( http://www.dutchsubmarines.com/ ) has excellent information about the title subject. Wikipedia has no permission to copy; all rights are reserved.
• Canadian Navy - web pages for current ships

WW2 ships

• uboat.net has databases of WW2 Allied warships and German U-boats.
• combinedfleet.com has tabular records of movement for many WW2 Japanese warships.
• uboatarchive.net World War II U-boats
• Charles, Roland W. (1947). Troopships of World War II (PDF). Washington D.C.: The Army Transportation Association. - Book on WWII troopships published in 1947.

Multiple Categories

• Jane's Fighting Ships - public domain editions of Jane's from 1919 and 1920 containing warship details for multiple nations.
• Jon Eastham's photos are of Naval and Commercial Shipping seen around Portsmouth, UK, including the Trafalgar 200 International Naval Review. Jon has offered to upload low resolution (300px width) copies of his images under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike, upon request. Contact Jon on his talk page.
• International Journal of Naval History Mostly military, but also some merchant coverage.
• Maritime Digitaal - Belgian, Dutch and Luxemburgish vessels (in Dutch)
• Ship IMO Numbers

Merchant ships

Classification society databases

The following classification societies have public databases that can be used to find basic information, general characteristics etc. of merchant ships currently in service. Information about a ship's classification society can be found e.g. in Equasis.

• American Bureau of Shipping
• Bureau Veritas
• China Classification Society
• Croation Register of Shipping
• DNV GL (formerly Det Norske Veritas and Germanischer Lloyd)
• Korean Register
• Lloyd's Register (LR)
• Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (ClassNK)
• Polish Register of Shipping
• Registro Italiano Navale (RINA)(Free registration required)
• Russian Maritime Register of Ships

When using the above databases, use the relevant citation templates, where available.

Other databases

• Miramar ship index has entries on over 250,000 merchant ships (subscription required; free 7-day trial) (no longer updated from 2022)
• Equasis, maintained by French Ministry for Transport, has a database of current - and some past - merchant ships (free registration required), many with direct link to current classification society database entry

Use the relevant citation templates when using the above databases.

Country specific sources

• Flotilla Australia
• State Records Authority of New South Wales Ships in Australian waters.
• Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
• Sino Ship News - Chinese shipping News since 2012
• Søfartens Bibliotek - Danish shipping accidents and incidents 1893 - 1996 (in Danish)
• J Marcussen's website - Danish merchant ships (in Danish)
• Goole-built or owned ships
• Shipbuilding on the River Tees - Tees-built ships
• Tyne-built ships
• East India Company ships
• Finnish Merchant Marine Database - ships registered in Finland
• Finnish-registered sailing ships
• DDG Hansa ships (in German)
• Dutch merchant ships (in Dutch)
• Stichting Maritiem Historiche Database Dutch site, Dutch and English language, Dutch merchant ships
• Zeesleepvart Dutch site, English language, Dutch salvage operations
• New Zealand Maritime Record
• Sjohistorie, Norwegian merchant vessels, many individual histories (In Norwegian)
• Infoflot - Russian merchant ships (in Russian).
• Aberdeen built ships
• Scottish-built ships
• Ships built by Harland & Wolff
• The Marine Engineer and Naval Architect
• British built ships
• - Pacific Marine Review - US ship news. Includes much information about individual ships and maritime affairs in the United States, as well as some coverage of foreign vessels. Copious photographs and images.

  1917 • 1918 • 1919 • 1920 • 1921 • 1922 • 1923 • 1924 • 1925 • 1926 • 1927 • 1928 • 1929 • 1930 • 1931 • 1932 • 1933 • 1934 • 1935 • 1936 • 1937 • 1938 * 1939 • 1940 • 1941 • 1942 • 1943 • 1944 • 1945 • 1946 • 1947 • 1948 • 1949 • 1950

  • Milwaukee ships, shipbuilders, shipwrecks etc

Other useful sites

• Plimsoll ship data has copies of Lloyd's Register of Shipping covering 1930-45. A wealth of info there.
• American Bureau of Shipping (ABS - formerly American Shipmasters Association) is the U.S. equivalent of Lloyd's Register. Collections of their Record of American and Foreign Shipping, published from c.1867, are available at Hathi Trust (22 years between 1875 and 1922) and Mystic Seaport (29 years between 1871 and 1900).
• Johnson's Steam Vessels of the Atlantic Coast 1917 and Johnson's Steam Vessels of the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific Coasts 1920. Snapshot of all merchant steamers active on stated American coasts in given year, arranged by owner. Somewhat similar level of detail to Lloyds/ABS.
• Maritime History of the Great Lakes. Archive of Great Lakes maritime-related news clippings and other resources.
• Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation - website providing ship and passenger searches, including ship and owner details and passenger manifests, for ships arriving at Ellis Island, New York Bay; registration required.
• Through Mighty Seas, details of ship from late 1700s to the First World War. Plenty of links to other sites
• The Ships List a wealth of info on passenger ships, shipping lines fleets etc.
• Lloyds registers on Google books incomplete 1799-1881 in US displays different set in GB.
• Civilian ships at History.navy.mil Lots and lots of high quality, public domain pictures of civilian ships.
• Lewis & Dryden's marine history of the Pacific Northwest full access on Google books published 1895
• NOAA merchant ship call signs (code letters) 1955-72)
• Mystic Seaport - Merchant ships 1857-1900
• Fakta om Fartyg is a large personal website about merchant vessels, mostly ferries and cargo ships (in Swedish).
• World Ship Society
  • Southampton Branch of the World Ship Society
• Greatships.net
• 7seasvessels - coasters worldwide
• Merchant Navy Nostalgia
• Merchant Navy Officers website
• Frostship (in Danish) - Scandinavian merchant ships
• Wrecksite Document Archive
• The Ship Scrapping List, updated almost daily, collects and combines information about ships that have been sold for recycling. However, the actual selling or beaching date is not given and should be verified from another source, e.g. Equasis or ship demolition reports.
• Robin des Bois also publishes information about scrapped ships.
• ShipSpotting.com contains 1.3M+ user-submitted photographs of ships as well as some database-derived information.
• 20th Century ships - what it says on the tin!
• J Marcussen (in Danish] merchant ships
• American Sternwheel Association boat directory
• Convoyweb - Allied and Neutral ships that participated in Allied convoys

Immigrant ships

• Immigrant Arrivals: A Guide To Published Sources: Ships

Shipwrecks

• Australian National Shipwrecks Database
• Belgian shipwrecks (in Dutch)
• Naufragios do Brasil (in Portuguese)
• Anegada shipwrecks A-F
• Anegada shipwrecks G-R
• Anegada shipwrecks S-Z
• Canadian shipwrecks
• / Shipwreckworld - Great Lakes shipwrecks
• Cape Verde shipwrecks
• Vragguiden Danish shipwrecks (in Danish)
• Estonian shipwreck register
• Hylyt.net Finnish shipwrecks (in Finnish)
• French shipwrecks (in French)
• Irish shipwrecks
• Irish Wreck Online
• Japanese WWII merchant ship losses 1941-45)
• Norwegian merchant vessels lost 1906-78 (in Norwegian)
• Swedish merchant ships lost during WWI and WWII
• Shipwrecks around the United Kingdom
• Board of Trade accident reports 1876-1980
•  United States
  • New Jersey shipwrecks
• Mareud website Info on Merchant and Naval casualties 1946-99.
• Maritime casualties
• Shipwrecks 1988-2009 (in German)
• Shipwrecklog - Shipwrecks worldwide
• Wrecksite news from around the world
• Shipwrecks off Alaska's Coast (database or table)
• Baltic Sea shipwrecks
• Lloyd's List 1741 - 1826
• Nordic Underwater Archaeology shipwreck database
• Maritime shipwrecks - over 500 shipwreck with photos.
• Sunken Ships of the Second World War

Raw Dump

The links were copied from another site and have not been verified as useful. Caveat nautilus. Wikipedia has no permission to copy from any of these sites; all rights are reserved.

Submarines - General

• http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S__Government/Military/Navy/Submarines/ - Yahoo: Submarine Web Sites - Links to official sites, unofficial sites, active submarines as well as historic and museum subs.
• http://www.rontini.com/ - Ron Martini's Submarine World Network- One of the largest collections of submarine links on the Internet.
• http://www.heiszwolf.com/subs/plans/plans.html - Submarine Plans - A survey of historical submersible and submarine drawings, from Alexander the Great's glass diving bell to modern nuclear-powered submarines

Submarines - U.S.

• http://www.momsen.org - Momsen.org - Page dedicated to the "Father of Submarine Rescue", Charles Bowers "Swede" Momsen and maintained by his granddaughter. Requires Internet Explorer; unusable with any other browser.

Submarines - other countries

• http://www.rnsubmus.co.uk/ - Royal Navy Submarine Museum - now defunct archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20040830023608/http://www.rnsubmus.co.uk/welcome.htm
• http://www.dolphin.org.il - Israeli Submarines - Extensive information on INS Dakar, an online memorial to all fallen Israeli submariners, and home to The Dolphin Israeli Submariners' Association

Naval Links

• http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk - The Royal Navy - Official Web Site - Good historical and current fleet information.
• http://www.noac-national.ca/noac/ - The Naval Officer's Association of Canada - The premier Canadian organization for naval professionals.

Citations for cut-and-pasting

Clipper websites and full text

• Bruzelius, Lars. "North American Clipper Ships". The Maritime History Virtual Archives.
• Bruzelius, Lars. "British Tea Clippers". The Maritime History Virtual Archives.
• The Era of the Clipper Ships, illustrated Web narrative of clipper development
• Clark, Arthur H. (1910). The Clipper Ship Era, An Epitome of Famous American and British Clipper Ships, Their Owners, Builders, Commanders, and Crews, 1843-1869. Camden, ME: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. ISBN 9780598281166.
• "Vessels/Voyages That Delivered Locomotives to California and Oregon, 1850-1869, Listed in Order of Arrival". Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. 2002.
• Westward by Sea: A Maritime Perspective on American Expansion, 1820-1890, digitized source materials from Mystic Seaport and Library of Congress American Memory

Clipper books

• Bruzelius, Lars. "Clipper Ships Bibiliography". The Maritime History Virtual Archives.
• Crothers, William L (1997). The American-built clipper ship, 1850-1856 : characteristics, construction, and details. Camden, ME: International Marine. ISBN 0070145016. -- Comprehensive reference on the design and construction of American-built clipper ships. Contains numerous drawings, diagrams, and charts, with examples of how each design feature varies in different ships.
• Cutler, Carl C. (1960). Greyhounds of the Sea. Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute.
• Howe, Octavius T; Matthews, Frederick C. (1986). American Clipper Ships 1833-1858. Volume 1, Adelaide-Lotus (reprint of 1926-1927 ed.). New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486251158.
• Howe, Octavius T; Matthews, Frederick C. (1927). American Clipper Ships 1833-1858. Volume 2, Malay-Young Mechanic. Salem, MA: Marine Research Society. ISBN 9780486251165.
• Lubbock, Basil (1984). The China clippers. The Century seafarers. London: Century. ISBN 9780712603416.
• Lubbock, Basil (1967) [1933]. The Opium Clippers. Boston, MA: Charles E. Lauriat Co. OCLC 558518.

Merchant sail web

• The Ships List, passenger lists, descriptions, linkable copyrighted pictures of ships
• Bruzelius, Lars. "Ships". The Maritime History Virtual Archives.
• Mystic Seaport Digital Library, Many digitized documents
• National Maritime Digital Library "American Offshore Whaling Voyages: a database."

Merchant sail books

• Primary Maritime References list
• Fairburn, William Armstrong; Ritchie, Ethel M. (1992). Merchant Sail. Salem, MA: Higgson Book Co.
• Matthews, Frederick C (1987). American merchant ships, 1850-1900. Series I. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486255385.
• Gleason, Hall (1937). Old Ships and Ship-Building Days of Medford. Medford, MA: J.C. Miller.

Indexes

• Shipindex.org, Includes indexes to books and WorldCat books about ships; paid version cross-references Lloyd's Register
• Index to David R. MacGregor, Fast Sailing Ships: Their Design and Construction, 1775-1875 Naval Institute Press, 1988 ISBN 0-87021-895-6, at Library of Congress
• Mystic Seaport Digital Library, Lloyd's Register, Yacht Registers, Record of American and Foreign Shipping
• Tacoma Public Library, Ships and Shipping Database, More than 13,000 individual index records on ships built on the Pacific Coast and ships with a connection to the Pacific Northwest.

WP:PDI - Public Domain Images.

• The Times Archive (subscription required, but may be accessible free of charge for UK editors who have a library card via their library's website). A wealth of info on merchant and naval ships and Wikinotable people between 1785 and 2008.
• National Library of Singapore. English language newspapers published in Malaya and Singapore between 1831 and 2006.
• Victoria Daily Colonist—Includes Pacific Northwest shipping. Often slow to download. Appears to cover dates 1858–1910
• California Digital Newspaper Collection (1849–1920)
• Library of Congress—American newspapers 1836–1922
• Historic Oregon Newspapers (1846–2020)
• New Zealand newspapers 1839–1945
• Australian newspapers from 1803–1954 and millions of other Australian documents at the National Library of Australia's website.
• Irish newspapers C18th–C20th
• Lloyd's List (1741–1825); news items indexed (1740–1837)
• Delpher Kranten, Dutch newspapers from 1618–1995 (in Dutch)
• Dominican Republic newspapers (1961–1970) (in Spanish)
• Swedish newspapers (in Swedish)

Merchant Vessels of the United States

The official annual list of merchant vessels registered in the United States. In addition to merchant vessels, editions typically include federal government ships of all types, including naval vessels, as well as private yachts. More information on individual ships was included over the passage of time; from the 1905-06 edition on, for example, a list of vessels lost during the year, along with the reason for the loss, was recorded. The 1936 edition in particular includes some unique data, such as a list of ships by shipbuilder for all ships built on or after 1900.

• On Hathitrust:
  • University of California - includes the 1867–68 edition plus most years between 1885 and 1935;
  • University of Michigan - a selection of years from 1888 to 1989.
  • Ohio State University - most years from 1924 to 1977, supplements only thereafter, to 1982; includes a complete list of editions for the 1940s.
• On Google:
  • [3] - full views 1874-1913, 1920, incomplete, 1913 edition with part 6 (usually separate) bound together, separate pagination: Part 2 p. 149 and Part 6 p49; 1915 variant title. B

American Lloyd's

Insurance register. Unlike Merchant Vessels of the United States, the American Lloyd's register for much of its history was not a comprehensive list of American-registered ships. It does however also include some foreign-built vessels, and often contains more information, or different information, on individual ships to that recorded in MVUS. It was known as New York Marine Register in 1857-1858.

Record of American and Foreign Shipping

Bureau Veritas

• BV Registers per year (in French).

Lloyd's Registers

• Lloyd's Register of ships, per year.
• History of the first 50 years of Lloyd's Register

• Register of Yachts, 1902
• Plimsoll shipdata - Lloyd's Register entries covering 1930-45, with some coverage of 1946. Searchable by name of ship.

Danmarks skibslist

• Danish Registers per year (in Danish).

• Mjroots (talk) - Willing to assist with requests for info from The Times. Requests via my talk page please.