ShipIndex.org: a vessel research database

ShipIndex.org simplifies vessel research. Whether you’re a genealogist, a maritime historian, a researcher, or just curious, we can help you learn more about the ships that interest you. We tell you which maritime resources, such as books, journals, magazines, newspapers, CD-ROMs, websites, and online databases mention the ships that interest you. We enhance these references by noting which ones include illustrations or crew and passenger lists, and where you can find or purchase the resource.

Upcoming Webinar With NYG&B

ShipIndex is excited to be offering a webinar with the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, in February 2026. This free webinar is titled "Researching Ships and Maritime History in Genealogy: ShipIndex.org and Much More" and is hosted by ShipIndex co-founder Peter McCracken. Register for free on the NYG&B site, and learn how to use ShipIndex.org, learn how to do other maritime history research, and learn a special technique for searching big sets of scholarly and academic databases even without access to academic collections. We hope to see you there.

Come See Us at RootsTech!

ShipIndex will be at RootsTech this year, in Salt Lake City, March 5, 6, and 7! It's been ten years since ShipIndex.org last exhibited at RootsTech and we're looking forward to returning. Come see us at Booth 1240, at the back of the exhibit hall! It'll be worth the walk. We'll have demos of the database, plus we'll be selling our Guides to Ships in person, and at a special price.

Guests

You are already a guest!

You have free access to over 150,000 citations from 74 resources.

Members

Sign up

Create an free member account and be able to track specific ships and receive email notifications from our free database when citations for a ship change.

Subscribers

Become a subscriber and get access to our full database with 3,861,478 citations to ships in 1,240 resources.

We offer several options:

Monthly recurring:

$10.00, repeating until you cancel

Fixed access time periods:

$7.50, Two weeks fixed time subscription
$26.00, Three months fixed time subscription
$43.00, Six months fixed time subscription
$80.00, One year fixed time subscription

Institutional Subscribers

Contact us for details

Request a trial

Become an institutional subscriber and give full access to ShipIndex.org for all of your patrons through IP authentication, proxy servers, library cards, and more. Incorporate the content into discovery layers. Discounts are available for certain types of institutions.

Our database was born from necessity. Learning about famous ships, like Titanic or USS Constitution is pretty easy. Learning about the hundreds of thousands of other ships that are mentioned in books, websites, and elsewhere, is much harder. ShipIndex.org makes this research easy and possible.