Welcome to the website of the World Ship Society Archive Digitisation Committee.

If you're a member of the society, please log in below.  If you don't already have a username and password then please sign up.  There will be a delay in activating your membership whilst your membership status is confirmed.

Members have free access to certain archives, and also the option to purchase others (eg, back-issues of Marine News, Bonsor .etc).

Founded over 60 years ago, the World Ship Society brings together members worldwide who are interested in ships, past and present.  Its monthly journal Marine News and its quarterly journal Warships are bywords for accurate information. Members frequently donate or bequeath their collections and research material to the WSS.  Such material is deposited in its archive at Chatham Historic Dockyard.  Although such material can be consulted by members travelling to Chatham, this is not practical for the bulk of members - several hundred of whom reside in Australia!  Hence this project to use modern technology to make such material accessible electronically. 

Published works are only the tip of the iceberg.  Authors will have researched their subject in much greater depth, for example gathering information on a ship's lifetime movements.  Such detailed information is of interest not only to ship buffs but to the millions of family historians researching the ship on which their great-grandfather sailed to the New World.

Noel Bonsor's acclaimed "North Atlantic Seaway" chronicles a century of passenger shipping on the prestigious route from Europe to North America.  But he had space for only a few lines on each ship, which may have made several hundred voyages and thousands of port calls in its lifetime.  Bonsor painstakingly recorded all such movements in scores of loose-leaf files, listing each owner, ship, port and date.  Such a collation exists nowhere else, hence making the material of Bonsor's bequest more accessible would help thousands of inquirers.

Other WSS members have donated material on naval vessels (e.g. Jim Colledge), or on sailing vessels, while others have created card indexes such as E C Talbot-Booth on ship recognition, or more recently have compiled databases.  The Society has over a million ship photographs so there is a huge resource potentially available.

Individual members of the World Ship Society as well as well wishers have donated generously to the setting up of this Archives website and the scanning of archive material, for which the Archive Digitisation Committee are most grateful. This will enable us to continue to expand its coverage.