Category Archives: Ships

This Week in Maritime History: April 27-May 3

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Let’s explore a few more important events in our maritime history for this week.

April 27: Exercise Tiger, a preparation for D-Day, took place on the southern coast of England, in 1944. Exercise Tiger was a multi-day practice assault on a beach in England that had features similar to Normandy’s Utah Beach. Military leaders wanted the experience to be as life-like as possible, so ships sailed around overnight to land in Slapton, England, on Lyme Bay, early in the morning of the 27th. Live artillery was also used, to give sailors and soldiers a sense of what the real D-Day would be like. But due to numerous problems, errors, poor communication, and the discovery of the “invasion” by a group of German fast attack craft patrolling the English Channel, some 750 American servicemen died in the exercise. It did, however, identify numerous problems to be addressed before the actual invasion. 

April 28: In 1789, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on board HMS Bounty (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), and set Captain William Bligh and members of his crew in an open boat, in the Pacific Ocean. Bligh successfully sailed to Dutch Coupang (now Kupang, in Timor), losing only one sailor during an attack by hostile natives when they initially landed on Tofua, in Tonga. The voyage is considered one of the most remarkable navigational successes ever.

April 29: USS Peacock (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) captured HMS Epervier (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) in 1814, in one of the most one-sided victories of the War of 1812, off the coast of Florida. Epervier had much lighter armament than Peacock, and was no match, particularly when Peacock fired directly into Epervier’s hull. Epervier was taken to Savannah, Georgia, and absorbed into the US Navy as USS Epervier, then was lost at sea in the Atlantic, in July or August 1815.

May 1: SS Gulflight (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), an American oil tanker, was torpedoed off the coast of England soon after the start of World War I, in 1915, playing a big role in pushing the US into war. Gulflight was sailing with gasoline and oil from Port Arthur, Texas, to Rouen, France, when British naval ships surrounded Gulflight and ordered it to enter port. German U-boat U-30 (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) spotted the ships and fired on Gulflight, putting a hole in the starboard bow, and causing the ship to start sinking. In the end, Gulflight stayed afloat, and after repairs continued to sail for many years. The ship was renamed to Nantucket Chief in 1937, then Refast in 1938, and during World War II was sunk by German submarine U-582 (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) off the Canadian coast.

And here’s a bit of maritime history museum news for this week.

The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum will be opening on May 17, in Vergennes, Vermont. Their newest exhibit is “Underwater Archaeology: Diving into the Stories of People and Canal Boats on Lake Champlain”. The museum is free for all visitors!

On May 24, 2025, Mystic Seaport’s new exhibit, “Monstrous: Whaling and its Colossal Impact”, will open. This looks like a fantastic view into the Seaport’s most central topic of research. I look forward to seeing this exhibit, hopefully soon. 

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

This Week in Maritime History: April 20-26

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This week we explore a range of events in maritime history, from single-handed circumnavigations to several disastrous collisions at sea.

April 21: The Indonesian diesel-electric sub Nanggala (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) sank in the Bali Sea, in 2021, most likely due to a power outage that the crew was unable to recover from. All 53 people on board lost their lives. 

April 23: Several days after the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, the US Navy anchored a barge called Black Diamond in the Potomac River, to try and prevent the assassin John Wilkes Booth from crossing into Virginia. A side-wheel steamer serving as a troop transport ship, the Massachusetts (formerly the JWD Pentz), collided with Black Diamond, leading to the loss of at least 87 lives. Learn more about this incident in “Shipwreck on the Potomac”, to be published next week.  

April 24: Joshua Slocum set sail in his oyster boat Spray (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), in 1895, from Boston, to begin the first solo circumnavigation of the world. Slocum had arranged a publishing contract to write about the voyage, and the resulting book, Sailing Alone Around the World, became a classic in travel literature. Slocum received extensive praise and publicity from the book, and brought Spray up the Erie Canal to the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, in Buffalo. Ten years after publishing his book, and finding himself very low on funds, Slocum attempted another voyage in Spray, despite its very poor condition by then. He sailed from Massachusetts in 1909, headed for the West Indies, but was not heard from again, and was declared legally dead in 1924. 

April 26: In one of the worst US naval accidents since World War II, USS Hobson (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) was cut in two during a collision with USS Wasp (CV-18) (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), while completing amphibious exercises in 1952. Hobson had been commissioned in 1942, and immediately served in the North African theater, supporting aircraft carrier USS Ranger. In 1943, Hobson served in the North Atlantic on convoy duty, including sailing with RMS Queen Mary when it transported Winston Churchill to the Quebec Conference. Hobson served in the very first wave off Utah Beach during D-Day, shelling targets on shore. Hobson continued with extensive service in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters toward the end of the war. A memorial to USS Hobson now stands at the Battery, in Charleston, SC, where the ship had been originally built. 

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

This Week in Maritime History: April 13-20

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Of course we are back this week with the loss of the Titanic, in 1912, but it was not, by any means, the largest loss of life in this particular week in maritime history.

14: The most famous shipwreck, that of RMS Titanic (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) on its maiden voyage, occurred on the night of April 14-15, 1912. The “RMS” in the ship’s name refers to the fact that Titanic was designated a “Royal Mail Ship,’ providing specific service in delivering British mail to and from North America. Titanic, of course, did not have enough lifeboats for all of the passengers who were on board. The disaster did lead to significant safety changes associated with travel at sea, particularly around carrying sufficient lifeboats, and the required use of radios on passenger ships. 

For more on Titanic, see the following websites:

April 16: The German troop transport ship MV Goya (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) was sunk in 1945 by the Soviet submarine L-3 (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), leading to one of the greatest losses of life at sea. Goya was built in Norway in 1940 and seized by the German government and incorporated into the Kriegsmarine. In 1945, as part of Operation Hannibal, Goya sailed from Poland to Germany, to evacuate over 7000 citizens, soldiers, and sailors. The ship was attacked from the air by Soviet bombers, suffering only minimal damage, but then was spotted by a minelayer submarine. Goya was slowed by engine problems on one of its convoy vessels, giving L-3 an opportunity to fire four torpedoes at the ship, two of which hit. Goya sank immediately, and only 183 on board survived.

April 18: In 1990, the wreck of the five-masted schooner Cora F. Cressey (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Cora F. Cressey was launched in 1902, at the Percy and Small Shipyard in Bath, Maine, and was one of the largest wooden ships ever built. After retiring from service in 1928, the ship spent ten years as a floating nightclub in Massachusetts and Maine. Eventually, Cressey was intentionally sunk to act as a breakwater near Bremen, Maine. Portions of the vessel are on display at the Maine Maritime Museum, which is at the original Percy & Small Shipyard, where Cressey was originally built.

April 20: The 1657 Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife took place during the Anglo-Spanish War of 1654-60, in the Canary Islands, in an attempt to take the Spanish treasure fleet from the Americas. The fleet had already arrived in Tenerife and was safe from the English navy, but Admiral Robert Blake succeeded in destroying most Spanish ships in the harbor, without taking on any serious damage to his fleet.

Here are some other interesting bits in the maritime world this week:

48° North, a newsletter of maritime happenings in the Pacific Northwest, has a great story about the reuse of the 115-year-old mast of 1907 schooner Martha. When Martha needed a new mast, they turned to Northwest Maritime’s boat shop, where manager there suggested that the mast be used to build a new boat. There’s much more to it, and you should read the whole story.

At the Hudson River Maritime Museum, in Kingston, NY, their solar-powered tour boat, Solaris, will begin its 2025 season on May 2. Tickets are now on sale/sail — if you’re in the area, be sure to book a trip. (I think I’ll book a ticket for May 3, so if you’re around, let me know!)

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

This Week in Maritime History: April 6-12

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We look at a number of ship losses this week, including the most famous one.

April 7: Japanese battleship Yamato (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) was sunk in 1945, during Operation Ten-Go, in World War II. Yamato was launched in 1940, and at the time was the most powerfully built battleship ever, along with its sister-ship, Musashi (Wikipedia, ShipIndex). Yamato served as the flagship of Japan’s combined fleet, and in 1942 Admiral Yamamoto directed the Battle of Midway from Yamato’s bridge. Operation Ten-Go was a Japanese plan to attack Allied forces that had invaded Okinawa. Yamato was to be beached near Okinawa to attack Allied forces until it was destroyed. But through codebreaking, the Allies knew of the plans for Operation Ten-Go, and Allied forces attacked Yamato before it could approach Okinawa. Allied forces battered the ship throughout the day, and in the afternoon the ship finally sank after an incredible explosion of Yamato’s magazines, creating a mushroom cloud that was visible 100 miles away. Of 3,332 crewmembers, about 3,055 were lost. Yamato has remained a significant symbolic touchstone in Japanese culture.

April 10: USS Thresher (Wikipedia, Shipindex), a nuclear-powered attack submarine, was lost off the US eastern seaboard in 1963, while doing deep-diving tests. All on board were lost. 

April 10: RMS Titanic began its maiden voyage from Southampton, in 1912. The next day, Titanic arrived at Cork, Ireland, then set sail for New York, and movie history.   

April 11: SMS Blücher (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), the last German armored cruiser, was launched in 1908. Blücher was lost at the Battle of Dogger Bank, in 1915, during World War I, with the loss of perhaps as many as 1000 sailors. 

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

This Week in Maritime History: March 30-April 5

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Storms play an important part this week, from the nearly-always-stormy Cape Horn, in 1840, to the sinking of a Newfoundlander sealing ship in 1915.

March 30: In 1881, SS Aberdeen (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) sailed on her first voyage, from London to Melbourne, via Cape Town, then to Shanghai, and back to London via the Suez Canal. Aberdeen was special because it was the first ship to be successfully powered by a triple expansion steam engine, a major improvement on the two-cylinder compound engines. In 1906 Aberdeen was sold to the Ottoman government and renamed Halep, then was sunk by a British submarine in World War I, while serving as a Turkish troopship. 

March 31: A storm off the coast of Newfoundland in 1914 caused the sinking of the SS Southern Cross (Wikipedia, ShipIndex). Southern Cross was launched in 1896 and served with the Southern Cross Expedition to Antarctica in 1898 to 1900, and was the first expedition to spend the winter on the Antarctic mainland. After that voyage, Southern Cross served in sealing hunts from 1901 until its loss with all hands in 1914. 

April 1: The Battle of Okinawa began in 1945, as the end of World War II approached. USS West Virginia (Wikipedia, ShipIndex) had been bombed and seriously damaged during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Navy mess attendant Doris Miller was on board West Virginia at the time; he was sent to man an anti-aircraft gun despite having no training, and eventually was awarded a Navy Cross for his actions. In 1945, at the start of the Battle of Okinawa, West Virginia sat just off the island for several days, supporting the invasion through ground bombardment and illuminating the invasion space. One kamikaze aircraft managed to evade West Virginia’s defences and crash into the ship, causing the deaths of four sailors.

April 3: Sailing to San Francisco around Cape Horn in 1849, on board Croton (ShipIndex), Hiram Chittenden drew a picture of the landscapes he saw in Le Maire Strait, at the eastern edge of Cape Horn. The San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park has an image of this drawing, plus some description of it, in a blog post from 2012. As a born- and bred-Seattleite, I of course recognize the name of Hiram Chittenden – as you might, if you’ve ever visited the Ballard Locks, more accurately known as the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, reflecting his important work in Seattle for the Army Corps of Engineers from 1906 to 1908.

April 4: In 1865, President Lincoln visited Richmond, Virginia, aboard a converted sidewheel steamship, USS Malvern (Wikipedia, ShipIndex), after Richmond was taken by Union troops. Malvern served as a Confederate blockade runner under the name William G. Hewes, then Ella and Annie. As Ella and Annie, the ship was captured by USS Niphon in 1863, was renamed Malvern, and added to the Union Navy. After the end of the Civil War, Malvern ended up back with its original owner, and original name, William G. Hewes.

For more about these ships, check out ShipIndex.org. And let us know if you have events that you think we should include!

Ship Models Available for Donation

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A friend of ShipIndex.org contacted us to see if we know on anyone who might be interested in acquiring several excellent ship models, made by a professional modeler but for his own enjoyment. These models have been appraised and are in attractive display cases. They’re also in Tennessee, and transporting a ship model is no easy task, so keep that in mind.

Here’s an example of some of this artist’s models on display in a public library:

If you’d like to learn more, don’t hesitate to contact us at comments@shipindex.org, and we’ll connect you with the current owner of these models.

Most Popular Vessel Names in the US, 2025 edition

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I updated the Merchant Vessels of the United States file again this week. This is a file provided by the US Coast Guard describing some 387,000 vessels registered in the United States which have a valid Certificate of Documentation, from the National Vessel Documentation Center, based in Falling Waters, WV. The file lists all boats that receive federal documentation – usually those that will travel between states or outside of the United States, or are about 20+ feet or longer. This is different from state titling, which usually happens for smaller boats with a motor. Of course, the smaller non-powered ones, like rowboats and canoes, usually don’t require any titling or documentation at all.

Anyway, MVUS includes all US-flagged commercial vessels, and a lot of large personal vessels, as well. It’s the best file for finding the most popular vessel names in the US, which is of course a popular topic at a guide to vessel names!

Most commercial vessels have unique names that are just a combination of letters and numbers, like “Art 360”, “Art 361”, “Art 362”, “Art 363”, or “T13909”, “T13911”, “T13912”, etc. Most of these are barges, and to be honest, they’re not that interesting. Of the 209,037 unique ship names (ending with “Zzzz!”) and 386,377 unique vessels in MVUS, 175,049 appear only once. Some of those are quite interesting, and we will investigate a few in the future. For now, here’s how the instance of ship names breaks out:

# of instances# of names# of vessels% of vessels
1175,051175,05145.3%
215,62631,2528.1%
35,72417,1724.4%
4-108,95151,47013.3%
11-993,53687,76622.7%
100+14923,8006.1%

Over 31,000 ships have a single matching partner with the same name somewhere in the country, and nearly 150 have at least 100 different ships with the same name.

Note: this analysis is pretty basic; I didn’t combine vessel names that are very similar, but not the same, like “Ain’t Mis Behavin”, “Ain’t Misbehavin”, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, and “Ain’t Miss Behavin” – I’m not sure which name I’d combine these under, for instance! Actually, I did correct one or two. There was one listed as “0hana” and I felt pretty sure they meant “Ohana”, and it was a mistake in the Coast Guard’s National Vessel Documentation Center. I could be wrong, though. (I did note the former name in my correction, so if I was wrong, a person can still find that ship name.)

Some people name their vessel “USS Enterprise” or “USS Git-It-Done” or “HMS Michele”. I kept those initial parts in here because, unlike with the actual naval ships, it is a part of the name, for better or (most definitely) for worse. One feature of ShipIndex.org is that when you do search for, say, “HMS Indefatigable” (definitely one of the best ship names ever), the database assumes that you want to search for “Indefatigable”, as that will return the best results. It still gives you the option of searching with the “HMS”, however – which will be useful for those searching for “USS Michele”.

A lot of owners put “The” at the start of their ship name. There are a dozen ships named “The 19th Hole”, along with 27 named “19th Hole”. Ugh. On the one hand, I very much dislike putting “The” at the front of a ship name! On the other hand, my brother and a friend built a rowboat for our dad, and I carved a nameboard for it, and that boat had the name “The Prelude”, with the article. (See a picture of it, below.) But, see, our dad had written a book about William Wordsworth and his poems, one of which was named “The Prelude”, and we also thought this might be a precursor to a larger boat.

An acceptable use of an article in a ship’s name, according to me.

Anyway, which are the most popular vessel names in the US, in 2025? Here’s a list of the top 50 vessel names in MVUS, with the number of boats with that name, as of February 2025:

Ship NameNumber of instances
Serenity538
Freedom519
Andiamo390
Liberty370
Osprey329
Second Wind305
Pura Vida274
Grace271
Ohana264
Island Time262
Why Knot253
Happy Ours250
Relentless250
Serendipity241
Seas the Day240
Escape239
Legacy236
Island Girl232
Odyssey231
Destiny227
Blue Moon222
Knot on Call222
Carpe Diem221
Orion221
Calypso219
Aurora213
Spirit209
Endless Summer205
Patriot205
Gratitude201
Voyager195
Phoenix194
At Last191
Tranquility188
Morning Star187
Dream Catcher183
Pegasus182
Halcyon180
Valhalla178
Southern Cross177
Bella Vita176
Liquid Asset176
Zephyr176
Harmony174
Escapade172
About Time171
Encore171
Journey170
Cool Change169
Dragonfly168

In a week or two I’ll write a post that looks at the changes in the most popular vessel names, over the past five years. I hope you found this as interesting as I did!

Using ShipIndex.org With Your Holiday Gifts

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Did you, like me, receive a curious set of porcelain knick-knacks that your mom picked up at a charity shop because they had pictures of ships on them? No? OK, well, maybe your mom is different from mine.

But I did get the following three items from my mom, and as you can see by the stickers on the bottom, she found the set for £2, presumably at a charity shop in London or in Wiltshire. Knowing my love of ships, she took them to Seattle, gave them to me as a small Christmas gift, and then I brought them home with me to the Finger Lakes region of New York. Now that they’re here, what could I discover about them?

First, the ship(s). As you can see, the images are of several different ships. The taller piece (perhaps for holdings cigarettes?) has a different image on each side. One image matches the image on the ridged piece, labelled on the bottom as “ARACAN 1854” and displaying a three-masted bark. The back side of the taller piece has a somewhat shorter vessel, with full topsails rather than split topsails. The other piece has an image of a four-masted bark, with no name on the back. Also, all three pieces have the name “Thos. & Jno. Brocklebank Ltd”, a 19th and 20th century shipping line that was acquired by the Anchor Line in 1912, according to Wikipedia.

In the image below, of the two sides of the taller piece, the image on the left, with the flags blowing aft, has got split topsails, and matches the image of the Aracan from the ridged piece. The image on the right shows much larger single topsails on each mast, on what appears to be a different vessel. I guess I don’t know what ship it represents!

To learn more about the one named ship, I went to ShipIndex.org, as one does, and searched for “Aracan”. In the subscription database I found 32 citations from six resources. Some citations have very little information about the specific vessel, like the top two, while others, like the bottom two, have at least a bit more:

The entries from the various shipping registries, as in the bottom viewable entry, are more useful, and from them I can see that Aracan was a bark, and was built in Sundsvall, Sweden, in 1876. The ship’s captain at this time was Capt H.F. Hedberg.

Other entries, though, such as this one from 1875, before the ship was launched, show a different ship — one that was built in 1854, in Whitehaven, England, and registered in Liverpool.

So I can see now that there are at least two ships named Aracan, built nearly 20 years apart.

Given our ability to differentiate between ships of the same name, this is a great opportunity to do just that. I use Wikidata Q-identifiers because I believe they are the best, most shared, most common, and most open, tool for implementing and using Linked Data. So I search Wikipedia for an entry about ships named Aracan, and I find nothing there. That’s not a complete surprise, but it’s a bit disappointing. I check Wikidata for any records of ships named Aracan there, and again come up short:

I can create Wikidata entries for the two Aracans that I now know about, but I really don’t have a lot of information about them. In the grand scheme of things, that really is the correct thing to do – it contributes to the greater good and makes it easier for others to learn more about these specific ships. But I don’t have much detail to add about either ship, and I have a checkered history in creating and editing records in Wikidata and Wikipedia, so I shy away from it, at times. I could perhaps use the image of the 1854 Aracan from this porcelain, but a quick search online indicates that the pieces probably date from the late 1950s so I don’t feel that I can say with certainty (which Wikidata expects) that the image is copyright-free. Perhaps, in the future, I’ll create records for these ships. ShipIndex, though, has the ability to quickly create our own identifiers, which we can use until we find that Wikidata Q-identifiers exist. So, for now, that’s what I’ll do.

I’ll then associate the citations that are clearly about either the 1854 or the 1876 vessels, with those new identifiers, and now the page looks a bit different, with a record of two different ships sharing the same name, and with citations about each one combined together.

If or when Q-identifiers are created for these ships, and if or when images are added to those entries, these ‘cards’ for the two different ships with the same name will add and incorporate those images into this page.

You may not have received a holiday gift with a ship on it, but if you did, see if you can find it it ShipIndex.org!

14 Odd RN Ship Names

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The Portsmouth (UK) News has a brief article titled “14 odd names for Royal Navy ships” which discusses exactly that. The topic was raised on the Maritime History discussion list (MARHST-L), with a few others mentioned – most of which appeared in the comments on the article’s page.

Check it out at http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/defence/14-odd-names-for-royal-navy-ships-1-7168404 .

New Report on Naming USN Ships

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A colleague on Twitter, @ICComLib, pointed me to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service about the naming of US Naval ships. This is actually a pretty interesting issue, and can get quite controversial quite quickly.

Ever since the founding of the US Navy, there have been conflicts about how names are assigned. Aircraft carriers are now nearly always named after former US Presidents. So was it a slight to Jimmy Carter to have his name assigned to a submarine, rather than an aircraft carrier?

Not really, since Carter was a USNA graduate, joined the submarine service where he sailed on and commanded submarines, and worked directly under Admiral Rickover to develop the new nuclear Navy.

On the other hand, the Seawolf class of attack submarines are named Seawolf (SSN-21), Connecticut (SSN-22), and Jimmy Carter (SSN-23); as the report states, “which were named for a fish, a state, and a President, respectively, reflecting no apparent class naming rule” (pg 4). There’s not a lot of continuity there.

From the launch of the brig Jefferson in April 1814, to the naming of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in 1970, apparently only one Naval ship had been named after a living person – in that case, John Holland, creator of the Navy’s first submarine (USS Holland (SS1)), which they bought from him, and then named after him, in 1900. Since 1970, however, this has happened every couple of years; three ships in 2012 alone were named after living people (John Glenn (MLP-2), Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10), and Thomas Hudner (DDG-116)).

One interesting point in the report is that, while one might say that there is no regularity to how ships are named in the US Navy, at the same time the right of the Secretary of the Navy to make exceptions in naming conventions is one of the oldest ship-naming traditions.

Another highlight is the role that Congress plays in suggesting or influencing vessel names and clarifications: one interesting example was that of a message to the Navy from Maine’s two Senators in 2013, seeking clarification of the forthcoming amphibious dock ship, to be named USS Portland. Senators Collins and King were concerned because the Navy had indicated that the ship was being named after Portland, Oregon, and not Portland, Maine. As the Senators pointed out, not only were previous Portlands named after Portland, Maine (for instance, USS Portland (CA-33)), or both cities (LSD-37), but Portland, Oregon, itself, was named after Portland, Maine.

This report is a followup to a report submitted to Congress from the Navy three years ago (though this report was written by staff at Congressional Research Service, not the Navy’s Naval History and Heritage Command, which put together the previous report). It seems clear that the Navy will continue to create guidelines for how ships should be named, and also continue to ignore them, when they see fit to do so.