ShipSpotting.com Forum
Shipspotters all over the world => Shipping News and information => Topic started by: Bob Scott on May 04, 2010, 01:07:32 AM
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Is it just me? Am I some kind of one-off weirdo because I am interested in details about a ship, particularly who owns and/or operates it?
Why is it that only a tiny minority of photo-posters bother to tell us by whom the ship in their photo is operated? What is your interest? Is it ships or just photos of them?
And it is not just on this site but on others that this seems to be so.
The (newish) owners of this site have been advocating the inclusion of such details as MMSI numbers and call-signs which - in my view, anyway - are of little or no importance or relevance. Yet there is nary a mention of the ships' owners/managers/operators, some details of which are still freely (ie gratis) available from Equasis and some other sites - so there's no excuse that the info can't be found.
People just can't be bothered providing details. It will hamper them in their quest to be top posters, perhaps!
If you don't provide any details of the ships in your photos, and I don't know the vessels, I, for one, probably won't bother to look at them properly so you won't score many 'hits' from me.
But then I am some kind of one-off, weirdo, info-freak, aren't I?
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Yes, you are a rare species Bob,
but we are glad to have you :-) .Will think of it next time.
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Hi Bob
I'm with you and like to read plenty of detail on the subject and it doesn't have to mean owners, charters, or cargo origin, think at least a photo date, location and maybe pertinent info the poster may know about the subject would be a welcome addition. Many shots could be seen in a better light with a bit of extra text, from what I recall the new site minimises this requirement which a shame, especially as photographers may well have gleaned some interesting comment in the course of the outing. After being in this game for some time one gets a handle on the shipping scene and learn where to glean interesting snippets to post. We live in hope.
Cheers
Brent
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Hi Bob
I'm entirely with you on this one. Some posters still can not be bothered to fill in even the IMO or date/place of photos. Both must be mandatory. And any pics. submitted without the latter should be deleted immediately because as a record they are useless.
Allan
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Thanks, Brent and Allan,
It's nice to know one is not entirely the voice crying in the wilderness!
Ken,
You are quite right that it is up to the member but surely, since he is probably having to consult Equasis for the (allegedly) mandatory info like the IMO number, it is not too much to suggest that he includes some of the other info that is staring out at him from the Equasis page.
I wouldn't be expecting a full tech-spec of the ship (it would be nice, though); but I would like to see some tonnage(s) mentioned and, ideally, something about who runs the ship.
I do recognise, though, that members who swamp the site with four, five or six pics of each ship that passes them might find it onerous to have to include details with every one
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Hi Bob,
I agree some people give almost no info. However owners change all the time. If you want to upload more then one photo of a ship, just give a backspace after the first upload and you can upload another one without copy/paste technique.
Cheers Fred
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Hi Bob,
Have a look here, I think this will be my new standard. Equasis data including ships management data. I didn't take much longer and it didn't hurt either :-)
http://www.shipspotting.com/modules/myalbum/photo-1105692-GRAIN+EXPRESS
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Hi Bob,
interesting thread from you.
In general I am with you. I like to have as well to have the data of the vessels, the most important is date of built and tonnage and the history of the ship, which I always put in my postings.
But with the owner, manager,...... owner I have often problems.
Like for example a photo I will post during the next weeks the bulker Tufty.
Sea-Web is distinguishing between Group Owner, Operator, Manager, Registerd Owner, DOC. And for every column you find a different name.
Tufty for example has:
Group Owner Navarone SA
Operator Canfornav Inc.
Manager Navarone SA
Registered Owner Taboga Shg. Co Ltd.
DOC Navarone SA Panama
First I still do not know, what DOC means, and then you find at least 3 different companys, sometimes all are different. All these companys do not say anything ot me, and from Seaweb I cannot find out, what is the real company behind the vessel. So why disturbing the others which such informations. How I loved the good old years, when it was really easy to find the companies behind the ships, without looking into Lloyds registers and getting confused by so many different companies mentioned.
For this I do not post any company names.
I hope you understand me a bit.
Gerolf
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Well done, Ed
You could make it even easier by simply stating:
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Hi Gerolf,
Although Sea-Web is excellent and I miss it now that my free subscription has run out, it does sometimes make things more complicated than need be, by giving all these operators, charterers, managers and document holders, etc.
In the case of your bulker TUFTY, Navarone SA of Piraeus is the name that matters and members who do not have access to Sea-Web can see this fact from Equasis, with even more proof available if they use the link to Germanischer Lloyd.
As I am sure you are well aware, Greek shipowners traditionally register each their ships to the ownership of its own, one-ship company. I disagree with you when you say it used to be easier in the past to discern their owners operators and managers. Then, the registered owner was often the only name that ever appeared in the normal registers like LR and LSI and it was quite difficult to prove that it was, say, one of the Popadopalopoulos Group
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Bob,
I agree with you entirely, a bit of info adds purpose and interest to a shot. Your submissions are always a case in point, older ships were easier to pin down in terms of ownership and by their very nature often had an interesting history. Its the less easy to look up snippets that make a shot.
But I am more sceptical about people just copying and pasting from sources such as Equasis for contemporary photographs. As long as the IMO No., Name, Date and Place of photograph are quoted we can look it up on there for ourselves if interested. Ownership is often hard to define these days, consists of several tiers and is something of a moveable feast. The ownership on the date the picture was taken can soon change.
The example of 'Grain Express' is a good one. It has not been mentioned that the actual parent owner is Excel Maritime Carriers. It depends to what level you wish to take it.
Regards
John J.
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....and I would maintain that 'TUFTY' is in fact a CANFORNAV ship. So there you go, different angles already! :-)
Regards
John J.
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Hi, John
I would maintain that Canfornav is a charterer! I would say that, like Gerolf and his Sea-Web, you have access to too much info! Much more than we poor amateurs.
Cheers
Bob
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Gerolf,
DOC means Document of Compliance holder - usually the same as the technical manager
Peter
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Bob , the ship is definetely on charter to Canfornav - she was in Melbourne not so long ago. Her and her sister Tundra are to be used by Alcoa for shipping pet coke out of Longview for their customers and spot cargoes for redelivery.
Some of us are lucky enough to work close to the action with access to almost everything. All first timers we photograph and write them up in our local gazette with what they are doing here , owners etc etc etc.
Whilst some details regading ship ownership can seem compl,etely confusing it makes for a good paper trail.
If you need anything regarding a particular ship drop me a line. Also as you seem to be write into it if you want a sample of our newsletter let me know - it is around 20 pages that include around 35 color photos.
Regds
Pete
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First of all many shipspotters are just spotters and photographers of ships with emphasis on photography (doing and collecting) without any deeper interest in ships themselves and without much knowledge of ships, technology, operations, shipping markets.
However, the group of those interested in ship details is much larger than judged from amount of information (ship details) provided by photo uploaders.
In fact many photo uploaders NOT providing info ARE interested in ship details, but they do not provide details for one or more of the following reasons:
- it is time consuming and spending time on uploading their own (and browsing others') photos does not leave much time for typing in ship details.
- they are interested and would like to provide details for their photographed ships, but they do not have access to reliable sources of information...
Therefore it was a good arrangement that shipspotting.com was kind of interconnected with LR Fairplay's Sea-Web (or other) database...
It is a pity this agreement had to be terminated. This is one of drawbacks of sale of shipspotting to new owners / operators.
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This comes down once again to the way the database is structured.
The way it works at the moment, if 1000 photos of the same ship are uploaded on to this site, then should all the technical details be entered 1000 times? i.e. against each image.
That is really inefficient, and no doubt typos, different sources will mean details will differ from photo to photo.
In a perfect world the site would consist of a database of ships with all the details required, and the images are merely linked to the master record.
This is how many ship databases work, but I appreciate it is easy to say this but a huge undertaking to actually do it.
Regards
Tony
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Hi everyone,
I am wholly in tune witth Bob who started this thread. This comes as no surprise, as we both earned our bread and butter researching and writing about maritime matters. There are so many more interesting things to relate about a ship than her vital statistics! But we can't expect every Shipspotter to have the knack or the resources to do this. Besides, I take my time, which is in contrast with other temperaments. I'm an angler, not a hunter. What I see around me is that the modern camera seems to be made for hunting.
Tony is absolutely right that it is not efficicient to add the same data time and again with the same ship. I've seen Aleksi (AJL) linking to external sources where the relevant information can be found. This usually works well. Now my idea was that Shipspotting should create ts own ship data database, so all you have to do is linking to this internal source. Or, on the basis of the IMO number, the data could be shown right away. But I thought this was too utopic: who would organize it, how should it be maintaned? I saw only one possible solution, and Tony's comment prompts me to no longer hide it. It's a wiki. As far as I understand it a wiki is a programme to capture and organize the knowledge from a wide variety of sources and people in a fast and easy way. Even large organizations are building their internal knowledge base with a wiki. Could we benefit from it?
Thirdly something which should be organized. When I see a ship in, say, the fast craft section and I know that her maximum speed is 15 knots, how and where can I contribute to putting her in the right category? When I did a quick test of the Beta version (I was not an offcial tester) I saw the same ship in five different categories. We can't flood the websmaster with PM's or find five different moderators to tell about it. The same goes for wrongly assigned IMO numbers. Couldn't we have a kind of notice board where you post your remarks, so that the people in charge can take the appropriate measures?
All the best, Anton
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Anton's suggestion is a very clever one. It opens up for a wealth of good solutions.
If, for whatever reason, it will not see the light of day, would a formalized co-operation with Miramar (for example) be a possible plan B?
Just a question.
cheers
Uwe
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Hi all,
Good idea Anton about that Wiki.
I recently came across an example of it at http://www.marinetraffic.com a Greek Free of charge AIS site. Have a look at this and see what a Wiki is like integrated here at the bottom of this page http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?mmsi=245529000&header=true
to be able to adjust the wiki you need to register and login. I'm just wondering if any alterations made by one can be changed by another. Or maybe is there a moderator in between to verify new data?
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My personal opinion is:
- Having ship-data is nice. IMO-Nr. should be mandatory ! Because, by IMO-Nr. you can always find out more about a ship ! If I am really so courious, I can take the number and search for more info.
- All other data, I think - not mandatory to post !
One reason: All other things than IMO-Nr. is a topic that might change. Even length of a ship can change :lol:
I would not like to have outdated information on a photo, when I am searching for a ship. Shipowners, Charterer etc., all subject to change.
Another reason: Laziness !! I simply don't want to take time, to tediously type in detail after detail.. while 1000 other menbers are doing the same ! I know some do that.. but for me, typing and typing that, is too much. After I spent a week or so at the coast, coming back with all the photos, I spent my freetime after work for uploading. I think, if someone is really interested in the information: Copy IMO and search !!
I do put basic info under my photos, but this is a copy& paste job from Equasis.
And the final reason: We have here thousands of people typing in the same stuff ?? It's not really eeh.. up to date I'd say !!
I think, there should be a kind of database where data is transferred automatically and shown with the photos (by IMO-Nr.). Just, if you check vesseltracker, no bothering about putting in data !!!
So, if I really am interested in a ship's specifics, I do anyways not use shipspotting.com to look for that. I go to vesseltracker, or some other pages that are around.
Just my thoughts.. 8-)
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Hi Bob
Thanks for asking about this. I am now putting more info on my photos than I dis before. It is quite fun looking up all the info. I am using Xvas and I am finding out info I didn't know before about ships I have photographed. Even IMO numbers, ex names and new names :-)
Thanks
Stephen
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hmmm,,interesting question
for my part,,owners/operators come and go,,, numbers like IMO etc stay.
most owners listed are anyhow PO boxes on a wall in the ABC isles
or Liberia,,which is not even in Liberia, but in Virginia, USA,,,etc etc
more interesting would be perhaps for me as sailor the safety record of the vessel and where she might trade or trades anyhow
brgds
capt ted
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Got to admit I find the information useful also, I used to copy and past that infro on my earlier posts from Maritimedata until it became a pay to use site.
But a problem I find, is that a ship might be owned by a company in panama, managed by a company in the US, the ISM is another company again somewhere else in the world but the ship displays someone else entirley markings and some of those markings are hard to identify, ok ones Like Cosco, Clipper, Sanko, Egon Oldendorff, NYK etc are easy to identify but they ones you can't like some cases they are displaying the Operator or the Charter's makrings and the all the data bases online don't tell us this, ok,sometimes the managers site says the ship is time charted for 3 years to such and such a company so you can find out and some companies list their fleet and ships they have chartered. But it is trying to identify those dificult ones is the problem especialy when we try to promote acuaracy on this site.
Glenn
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Hi Glenn,
You're right of course. I think we, as ship enthousiasts, have to live with it. In the professional world it's a real nightmare of course in case of casualties, like hitting the Great Barrier Reef: who's the responsible owner, under which jurisdiction can you sue him, etc. I think we don't have to bother too much to make this site the datebase which answers all questions. Of course I hate question marks. Or blank fields in a form. But I suspect that knowing the answers of necessity has become a big business (think of Lloyd's Register Fairplay and Lloyd's List Intelligence Unit). So be it.
Cheers,
Anton