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The Heritage Vessels Database

The Vessels Database is a list of vessels and their attributes. The list's primary focus is British Columbia but there are many other vessels included that were built elsewhere or were owned elsewhere. Any vessel with a link to Pacific Canada can be included especially vessels:

  • Built-in or owned by Western Canadians;
  • Owned by any government agency anywhere in Canada;
  • Built-in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, or Nunavut;
  • Successful challengers of the Northwest or Northeast Passages;
  • Which have experienced an incident in it's life that occurred in British Columbia.

    • Although a huge range of diversity is represented in the 35,000 entries many interesting groups of attribute data can be tracked. The chart below will indicate the current levels of content and growth of the database.

    Classification 2003 2004 2011
    Fishboats 3,419 5,544  
    Freighters 1,623 1,938  
    Passenger vessels 5,650 1,129  
    Tugs 3,810 4,527  
    Workboats 1,531 1,869  
    Yachts 4,322 6,924  
    Air Force vessels 126 131  
    Army vessels 65 72  
    Government-owned vessels 1,764 2,069  
    RCMP vessels 115 107  
    Canadian naval vessels 2,775 2,839  
    Non-powered vessels 3,852 4,411  
    Vessels powered paddlewheel 392 545  
    Vessels powered by sail 517 613  
    Vessels owned by AB owners 778 1,138  
    Vessels owned by SK owners 72 88  
    Vessels owned by MB owners 208 300  
    Vessels whose builder is known 8,630 21,565  
    Vessels whose designer is known 426 566  
    Vessels built in AB 0 220  
    Vessels built in MB 0 230  
    Vessels built in NT or YT 0 137  
    Vessels whose engine-type is known. 11,944 20,543  
    Vessels whose engine-builder is known 2,165 2,525  

Nauticapedia

Site News: April 19, 2024

The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,229 vessel histories (with 15,629 images and 13,195 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).

In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!

My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.

Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.

© 2002-2023