American signal code lists 1867-1932 and databases

(new 12 May 2006)

I am working on a database of US merchant vessel signal letter codes of the 1867-1932 period firstly as a tool for structuring and linking my own records but with scope for collaboration and data-sharing with others with overlapping projects that include either US official numbers or signal letters or both. I may never complete a signal letter database for its own sake so I am seeking possible collaborators whose personal interest is the “other half” that I am less interested in to explore whether we could pool our efforts for common advantage and also others with the same interests who may be interested in comparisons to test for discrepancies.

The signal letters dataset is designed as a subset of a larger database based on official numbers and equally relevant to other databases that include US official numbers and do not necessarily include any signal letters (refer Stock take).

My primary interest is merchant sail (including schooner barges and larger unrigged barges) but I am including limited data for steam and motor vessels for comparative and statistical purposes and as a check on duplications and typographic and data entry errors and to identify vessels of all types registered under both American and other jurisdictions. Others more interested in steam and motor could build upon that to save themselves effort and for checking purposes. I would be pleased to “subcontract” the 1920-1932 part of the period and could offer some assistance with that and post 1932.

My approach is designed to complement, and to be used in conjunction with, rather than duplicate or substitute for Jon Johansen’s projects transcribing the List of Merchant Vessels of the United States (LMVUS).

There were some 18,000 signal codes in the ranges H to M used by the US during 1867-1932 for merchant vessels and yachts (the Navy had a separate series with the initial letter G). At this stage, I can put official numbers to a bit more than a quarter of these and fuller details to a smaller proportion. Existing work by others could already be linked to flesh out the majority. The significance of the 1932 endpoint is that entirely new signal codes were issued in 1933.

Of course many US vessels did not have signal codes so these records are not a substitute for comprehensive databases of registered vessels but US signal codes of the period have a utility that the equivalent British codes do not have. The US signal code lists published separately from the complete vessel lists contain ownership information, number of decks and number of masts when the main tables of the LMVUS do not. (The lists form Part I of the LMVUS to 1894, then from 1895 to around 1930 were issued as a separate publication called Part VI incorporated only in the parallel Congress Documents edition of the LMVUS, then by 1932 through to 1936 and in some later years the section is back in the standard LMVUS.) The company fleet lists included in “Part VI” from 1908 onward include signal codes rather than official numbers. A number of personal publications identify US vessels by signal code rather than official number.

The pre-1867 period is covered in the Postcript at the end of my American research stock take (refer Stock take).