Last week, the ShipIndex senior management team organized a corporate retreat in Seattle. (Translation: I went back home to visit the parents.) While there, I went to the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library, and was reminded that they have their own Ship Index there. So, after collecting data for additions to the ShipIndex database, I made an appointment to visit the Seattle Room, and to take a closer look at the SPL Ship Index.

This Ship Index is a collection of about 25,000 cards with citations of ships mentioned in other resources, focused on Pacific Northwest maritime history. Most citations are from the monthly Marine Digest (much of which has been digitized by SPL) or Railway & Marine News, or the major Seattle daily newspapers: the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Some cards provide citations to other sources, as well, and a small percentage have newspaper articles clipped to the cards. The photos below show some examples of these cards. Most cards were added between the 1940s and the 1970s; the Index is not currently growing.

If you’re doing research on Pacific Northwest vessels from the 1900s to the 1980s, be sure to schedule some time with Seattle Public Library’s card-based Ship Index, in their Seattle Room. You’ll also find that indexes to many of the books regarding PacNW maritime history are in the ShipIndex.org database. (Many of those are in the free database, because I compiled them when I was working at the UW, and the database was just a side project. The titles that were freely available at the beginning have always remained freely available.) The most notable titles for PacNW history are as follows:

• Pre-1900: Wright, E. W., ed. Lewis & Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Portland, Or.: Lewis & Dryden Print. Co., 1895.
• 1895-1965ish: Newell, Gordon R., ed. The H. W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1966.
• 1960s-1975ish: Newell, Gordon R., The H.W. McCurdy Marine History of the Pacific Northwest, 1966-1976. Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1977. [to be added very soon]
• Sea Chest: The Journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society (1967-2011; Vols. 1-45). Seattle: Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, 2011.

Finally, here’s a research question: I know that the New York Public Library also has a card-based Ship Index, which I’ll visit again soon. Do you know of any others? For a project I’m working on, I’d like to know of all English-language card-based ship indexes. Please do let me know of any others you’ve come across! Comment below, or email me at peter [at] shipindex [dot] org.