What a vessel database is
A vessel database, or fleet register, is a list of the world's merchant ships with their details and the companies that own and manage them. A ship owner database shows the same data by company: each company and the ships it runs. Neptune Atlas keeps both in one register, organised by IMO number.
Organised by IMO number, not by name
Ships change names often, and names are reused. Thousands of names in the register belong to more than one ship. A database organised by name will sooner or later link a fixture (a closed deal) to the wrong ship.
Everything here is linked to the IMO number, which does not change when a ship is sold or renamed. The software checks the number as you enter it and refuses one with two digits swapped, so it never becomes a ship record nobody can find again.
101,900 ships have one. 75,596 have a deadweight on file and 26,304 do not. Where it is missing, it is shown as unknown, never as zero. Unknown and zero are not the same. A ship with zero deadweight would appear first in a size search and give wrong results.
Four kinds of owner, and you usually need the last one
"Who owns this ship" has four answers, and they are often four different companies: the registered owner on the certificate, the group that really owns the ship (the beneficial owner), the technical manager who runs the ship day to day, and the commercial manager who finds its cargo.
A broker needs the commercial manager, and public records rarely show that one first. The register keeps all four roles, each with its name. It does not squeeze them into one "owner" field that would be wrong three times out of four.
45,386 ships have a commercial contact you can e-mail about a fixture. Where there is none, the ship record says so. We do not guess an info@ address.
Shared data, private corrections
One register, every desk
Desk and aboveThe fleet data is shared, so every desk uses the same table and no customer keeps a separate copy. It is about 350 MB, and copying it for each customer would be wasteful.
Your corrections stay private
Desk and aboveIf your desk knows better about a ship, add a correction and a private note. Only your desk sees them. They sit on top of the shared record and do not change it.
Ship details and survey dates
Desk and aboveDeadweight, length overall, beam, draft, build year, flag, class society and the ownership chain, with port state control history where it exists.
Owners and managers directory
Chartering and aboveSearch the companies behind the ships, with the ships each one runs and the contacts your desk holds.
E-mail campaigns to owners
Fleet and aboveTrack e-mail campaigns to the owners in the register, so you know who you wrote to and who replied.
What is not in it
There is no crane capacity, no hold or hatch sizes, and no tween decks (extra decks inside the hold). Those fields exist but are empty, which a project cargo desk should know before it buys.
Summer draft is known for about half the fleet. Live AIS positions (ship tracking) are on a separate screen and are not part of the register. The register says what a ship is. AIS says where the ship was a few hours ago.
The live counts, and the gaps we know about, are on the fleet coverage page.