Every ship profile in the archive, listed A to Z by title, so ships named with a prefix such as HMS, RMS or SS sit together under that letter.
Ocean Liners Cargo Ships Tankers and Supertankers Warships Passenger and Cruise Ships Shipwrecks Ship Accidents Ship Breaking Maritime History
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Batillus: Shell’s 550,000 Tonne Tanker and Her Seven Years at Sea
Batillus, the first of four 550,000 tonne tankers built at Saint-Nazaire: her design, twin steam plant, the port of Antifer…
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Bismarck: The Battleship, Her Only Sortie and the Wreck Found in 1989
Bismarck’s design, the May 1941 Atlantic sortie that ended in her sinking, and what the wreck found in 1989 can…
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Cap San Diego: Inside a 1960s General Cargo Liner
How Hamburg Süd’s Cap San Diego carried coffee, meat and edible oil to Europe, escaped the breakers in 1986 and…
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Clemenceau: The French Carrier’s Long Road to the Breakers
How the retired French carrier Clemenceau went from Toulon towards India and back before being dismantled at Hartlepool in 2009…
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Costa Concordia: From the Rocks at Giglio to the Scrapyard in Genoa
The Costa Concordia casualty of 2012 and the salvage that followed: fuel removal, parbuckling, sponsons, the tow to Genoa and…
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Cutty Sark: From the Tea Trade to Australian Wool and Greenwich
How a clipper built for the China tea trade made her name carrying Australian wool, survived as Ferreira and became…
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Emma Maersk: Understanding Her Container Capacity
Why Emma Maersk’s 11,000 TEU rating differs from other published figures, and what limits the cargo a container ship can…
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Ever Given: The Suez Canal Grounding of March 2021
What the investigation found about the Ever Given grounding in the Suez Canal in March 2021, and how salvors refloated…
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Exxon Valdez: The Tanker, the 1989 Grounding and What Became of Her
The Exxon Valdez from her 1986 delivery to the Bligh Reef grounding, the repairs, five later names and her final…
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Great Eastern: Breaking Up Brunel’s Iron Steamship on the Mersey
How Brunel’s Great Eastern came to be beached on the Mersey in 1888, auctioned in lots and taken apart, and…
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Herald of Free Enterprise: The Zeebrugge Capsize of 6 March 1987
The ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized off Zeebrugge on 6 March 1987 after sailing with her bow doors open.…
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HMS Belfast: A Cruiser’s Service From Scapa Flow to the Thames
HMS Belfast from the 1939 mine damage and the Battle of North Cape to D-Day, Korea, her 1950s rebuild and…
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HMS Victory: Nelson’s Flagship and the World’s Oldest Commissioned Warship
How HMS Victory was built at Chatham, refitted for Trafalgar, saved in dry dock at Portsmouth and kept in commission…
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HMS Warrior: Britain’s First Iron-Hulled Armoured Warship
How HMS Warrior combined an iron hull, armour, steam and sail in 1861, and how a ship that became a…
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Ideal X: The Converted Tanker That Opened Container Shipping
How a wartime T2 tanker carried 58 containers from Port Newark to Houston in April 1956, and why the voyage…
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Mary Rose: Raising and Conserving Henry VIII’s Warship
How the Mary Rose was found, raised from the Solent in 1982 and conserved over 34 years, from PEG spraying…
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MSC Napoli: Structural Failure in the Channel and the Beaching at Branscombe
Why MSC Napoli’s hull failed in a Channel gale in January 2007, why she was beached at Branscombe, and what…
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NS Savannah: Nuclear Power in a Merchant Ship
How Savannah, the first US nuclear merchant ship, was built and run, what her reactor cost the design, and why…
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Oasis of the Seas: The Cruise Ship with a Split Superstructure
How Oasis of the Seas opened her superstructure to the sky, what that meant for cabins, wind, power and safety,…
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Prestige: The Tanker That Broke in Two off Galicia in 2002
How the tanker Prestige was damaged off Cape Finisterre, towed out to sea and lost in November 2002, and what…
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PS Waverley: How a Seagoing Paddle Steamer Works
Following steam through Waverley’s boilers, triple-expansion engine and paddle wheels, and what the 2020 Brodick accident showed about running her.
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Rena on Astrolabe Reef: The 2011 Grounding and Its Aftermath
How the container ship Rena came to run aground off Tauranga in 2011, what the investigation found, and the long…
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RMS Mauretania: Retirement, the 1935 Sale and Breaking Up at Rosyth
How Cunard’s Mauretania was laid up, her fittings auctioned and her hull broken up at Rosyth from 1935, and which…
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RMS Olympic: The Last Voyage to Jarrow and the Breaking of a White Star Liner
How RMS Olympic was sold, sailed to Jarrow in 1935, was auctioned over ten days and finished at Inverkeithing, and…
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RMS Queen Mary: From Atlantic Liner to Troopship
How Queen Mary was converted in Sydney, carried troops on three oceans, cut down HMS Curacoa and brought war brides…
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RMS Titanic: Design, Machinery and Passenger Spaces
How Titanic was built and powered: her subdivision, combined engines and turbine, boilers, electrics and passenger decks, from the 1912…
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Seawise Giant: The Longest Ship Ever Built and Her Many Names
The tanker built as Oppama and known as Seawise Giant, Happy Giant, Jahre Viking, Knock Nevis and Mont, and what…
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SS Andrea Doria: The Collision with Stockholm and the Wreck off Nantucket
The Italian liner Andrea Doria, her collision with Stockholm in July 1956, the rescue of 1,660 people, and the wreck…
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SS Edmund Fitzgerald: The Loss of a Lake Freighter and Her 29 Crew
The Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a Lake Superior storm on 10 November 1975 with all 29 crew.…
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SS France and SS Norway: From Atlantic Liner to the Beach at Alang
The French Line’s France became the cruise ship Norway, was withdrawn after a fatal boiler explosion in 2003, and was…
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SS Great Britain: Brunel’s Iron Screw Steamer and the Hull That Survived
How SS Great Britain joined an iron hull to screw propulsion in 1845, and how that hull survived Australia, the…
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SS John W. Brown: A Working Liberty Ship from Baltimore
How a 1942 Liberty ship carried cargo and troops in war, trained New York students for 35 years and was…
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SS Normandie: Design, Service and the Fire at Pier 88
How the French Line’s Normandie was designed, why she stayed in New York in 1939, and how a conversion fire…
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SS Rotterdam: A Liner Designed for Two Markets
How Rotterdam’s split stairway, public rooms and two-thirds aft machinery let a 1959 Atlantic liner become a cruise ship and…
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SS Thistlegorm: The Red Sea Wreck and Her Wartime Cargo
The Sunderland-built Thistlegorm, sunk in the Red Sea in 1941 with lorries, motorcycles and locomotives, and what surveys of her…
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SS United States: The Design Behind Her Atlantic Speed
How light construction, divided machinery and a four-screw plant gave United States her 1952 Atlantic record, and where the ship…
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Torrey Canyon: The 1967 Tanker Spill on the Seven Stones
How the tanker Torrey Canyon grounded off Cornwall in March 1967, why she was bombed, and how the spill changed…
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USS Arizona: The Battleship, the War Grave and the Memorial at Pearl Harbor
The career and loss of USS Arizona, the 1,177 men killed aboard on 7 December 1941, and the care of…
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USS Missouri: A Battleship Across Two Eras of Weapons
How Missouri kept her 1944 heavy guns and gained Tomahawk, Harpoon and Phalanx for her final commission and the 1991…
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Vasa: Why the King’s Warship Sank and How She Survives
Why Vasa sank in Stockholm harbour in 1628, how she was raised in 1961, and the long work of keeping…
