Wikidata:Property proposal/Mercantile Navy List ID
Mercantile Navy List ID
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| Description | ship ID in Mercantile Navy List, published by UK's Registry of Shipping and Seamen |
|---|---|
| Data type | External identifier |
| Domain | Wikidata property related to maritime and inland waterway transport (Q23779665) |
| Example 1 | Maree‑A (Q137920468) → 130156 (from here; one can also check the PDF version (archive)) |
| Example 2 | MISSING |
| Example 3 | MISSING |
| Allowed values | [1-9]\d* |
| Source | https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/mha_mercant/search |
Motivation
[edit]As the official, comprehensive listing of all merchant vessels registered under the British flag, it is one of the most important reference tools for anyone researching the history of British merchant shipping, and includes many ships not listed in its nearest equivalent, Lloyd's Register.
(bold by me)
The example above shows one such ship, which is not present in Lloyd's Register.
DmitTrix (talk) 19:22, 30 January 2026 (UTC)
Discussion
[edit]When I look at the link for Example 1, I see page 422 in a big document, which if I squint has ships starting with O. The other pdf has ships starting L I see no obvious mention of Maree‑A. And the PDFs seem to be pure images, with no OCRd text layer, so I'm not convinced how much use they are to us. Also I assume this was published in multiple years, and details of ships will change. Would not a described by source (P1343) with qualifiers like URL and date be better for modelling this? Vicarage (talk) 16:00, 2 February 2026 (UTC)
- Oh, sorry, somehow I didn't notice there was a comment here…
- The ship in the example was named Olivine II at the time – my bad, I forgot to mention that. It appears on the 12th line in the page I linked to (click the "View" button to get a larger image, then use the mouse wheel or the +/− buttons in the top left corner to zoom). You can see the number "130156" in the 1st column – that's the ID I'm proposing to add. (BTW, if you jump one page forward or back, you'll see the column titles – they only appear on every other page.)
- The number is supposed to be permanent and not to change throughout the ship's hull lifetime, much like the more modern IMO number / IMO ship number (P458) (which itself is historically based on the permanent IDs given to ships in Lloyd's Registry). DmitTrix (talk) 21:48, 10 February 2026 (UTC)
- Hmm… Regarding described by source (P1343)… I've noticed a case (Heather Bell (Q24027208)) where catalog code (P528) is used for a similar purpose, with catalog (P972) as qualifier. If the decision is not to create a new property, then I think this is a better approach. URLs and such can be added as sources.
- I still do think that creating a dedicated property is justified – there are potentially a lot (thousands?) of ships that have an official number in MNL. But if the community decides otherwise, I think catalog code (P528) is a good way to go.
- DmitTrix (talk) 16:29, 12 February 2026 (UTC)