Ships Data Base

Ships Search Form

Notes

Be sure to search for alternate spellings, as many ship and port names were mispelt in the newspaper articles.
All accents have been removed to facilitate searching.
If you can't find the ship name you are looking for, try using wildcards in your search. "%" is equivalent to any number of characters, "_" (underscore) is equivalent to a single character.
If you still can't find the ship name or date, please check back at some future time as we continue transcribing ships as time permits.
The spelling of ship names and ports have not been corrected - they are transcribed as they appear in the originals.
A "?" or "." indicates that the data was not available or was illegible in the reference. A "-" indicates a single character that was illegible in the reference. A "(?)" after the data indicates our best guess for the illegible data.
Port names are usually given in the English version (Cayo Hueso = Key West, Santomas = Saint Thomas).
In Ref A, the number following the ship's name is used to differentiate the voyage if the same ship is listed more than once.
References D & E did not indicate the ship names. Passenger names, however, have been transcribed to the database.
Reference F did not indicate the ship's name except in the case of a few families. Where available, the ship names appear in the passengers data base but they probably do not appear in the above ships list.

Port Names

Some ports were known then by a different name than at present. Here are some port names that may not be obvious:

old port name	current port name
Cuba	Santiago de Cuba
Puerto Rico	San Juan
Mobila	Mobile
Cayo Hueso	Key West
Aspinwall	Colon

The names of some ports sometimes varied in different shipping and/or passenger lists. To facilitate searching we have tried to always use a preferred form of the name as follows:

Preferred name	Alternate versions
St. Thomas	Santomas, Santhomas, San Tomas
Le Havre	Havre, el Havre
New Orleans	Nueva Orleans, N. Orleans
Veracruz	Beracruz
Puerto Rico	Pto. Rico
New York	N. York
Philadelphia	Filadelfia
Martinique	La Martinica

Please note that the term "& escalas" signifies "and intermediate stops".

Ship Types

Spanish	English	propulsion	notes
de guerra	warship	-
correo	mail ship	-
vapor	steamship	steam
fragata	frigate	sail (steam after the 1850's)	3 masts rigged with multiple sails. Often a heavily armed warship.
balandra	sloop	sail	small ship with a deck and 1 mast
bergantin	brigantine	sail	2 masts - at least one square rigged
polacra	-	sail	small brigantine - 2 or 3 square rigged masts with no mast platforms
corbeta	corvette	sail	3 square rigged masts - small frigate
goleta	schooner	sail	2 or 3 masts of equal length
pailebot	-	sail	small schooner - shorter forward mast
polnera	?	sail	? (not in Diccionario de la Lengua Española)
lugre	lugger	sail	small ship - 3 masts with sails in thirds and flying topsail.
bal. vivero	fish farm raft	?
místico	-	sail	coastal ship with 3 (sometimes 2) masts.

References:

Early Spanish Sailing Ships, by Jerry Wilkinson
Early American Sailing Ships, by Jerry Wilkinson

Where available in the source we have indicated the nationality after the ship type using the following abbreviations:

Abbreviation	meaning
belg	belga (Belgian)
brem	from Bremen (Germany)
au	austriaca/o (Austrian)
am	americana/o (USA)
esp	española/o (Spanish)
fr	frances/a (French)
ing	ingles (British)
germ	germanico/a (German)
CR	from Costa Rica
sardo	from Sardinia

Source Abbreviations

(see data base main page for more details)

code	source	published in
AER	Archivos Españoles en la Red (Spain Archives on the Web - now PARES - Portal de Archivos Españoles)	the Internet
BP	El Bien Publico	Santiago de Cuba
CPI	Catalogo de Pasajeros a Indias	Seville & Madrid
DH	Diario de La Habana	La Habana
DLM	Diario de La Marina	La Habana
GH	Gaceta de La Habana	La Habana
JP	Jorge Piñón	unpublished - transcribed from Municipal Archives in Gijon
MR/DC	Miriam Rivera & David Chudleigh	unpublished
SM	Ship Manifests (from destination port)	Ancestry.com
UC	La Union Constitucional	La Habana
VC	La Voz de Cuba	La Habana

Ships Data Base - Updated 03-Sep-2018