A century of sea fisheries in Belgium - Belgian fishing fleet

The Belgian fishing fleet has had an interesting evolution: vessels, boats and ships changed owner, immatriculation number, (unique identifying code) or port of registration. Over time ships were converted or equipped with more efficient technology: sailing ships were replaced by steamers and later the entire fleet was gradually motorized.

Because of these rapid changes it is not all that obvious to follow the characteristics or lifetime of a given ship from its construction to the moment the ship is taken out of service. These changes are now searchable by ship, for vessels operating from 1929 onwards. For ships registered in the port of Ostend, data is available from the late 19th century onwards.

Please note that this database is still under development. This database is intended to be a true copy of the "Official List of the Belgian fishing fleet". Your remarks contribute to the quality of this instrument. More information about the data sources used and the methodology of data collection, click here.

Search for a ship

As a result of your search you will get an overview list of all results (ships) that mention your search term or combination of search terms. Each of these returns is characterized by the immatriculation number and name given to the ship at the time of first registration. After clicking on the name of a vessel that you find in this resulting list, you get a table describing the lifetime of the selected ship.

The table describing the lifetime of a selected ship always starts with the year in which the ship was described for the first time and ends with the year in which the ship sank, was taken out of service, or was irreversibly damaged. Only those years in which changes occurred are shown in the resulting table. For these years only the changed features are listed. Light blue bars indicate an unchanged feature. White cells and bars indicate information gaps in the sources. Additional information (identifiable sources) on these missing features or any other reliable additional information about the ship is welcome. You can comment online by using the 'remarks' field on the bottom of each vessel form.