Messages from the ship
No messages here yet.
Safety messages the ship broadcast to everyone nearby over AIS, word for word, from the last 30 days. Written by the crew; most ships rarely send them.
What do these mean?
- Heard
- Ships send their position by radio (AIS) every few seconds to minutes. Receivers on land pick it up, so a ship far out at sea isn’t heard until it nears a coast.
- Knots (kn)
- How ships measure speed. 1 knot is 1.85 km/h or 1.15 mph, so 10 knots is about 19 km/h (12 mph).
- Working, can’t move freely
- What cable ships report while laying or repairing cable: they’re holding a line or a position and can’t easily get out of the way.
- Stopped at sea
- Engines on but not moving, often holding position while working.
- Track on the map
- Solid blue where the ship was heard. Grey dots where it went quiet for more than half an hour: an estimate of its route from where it was last heard to where it was heard again, following the usual sea lanes round any land. The real path isn’t known.
- Turning
- How fast the ship is changing direction, as it reports it: “holding course” when it isn’t. Only while it’s moving.
- Messages from the ship
- Short safety notices the crew broadcast to every ship nearby, such as asking others to keep clear while they work.
- Heading / Facing
- Which way the ship is moving, and which way its front points when it is stopped.
- Draught
- How deep the bottom of the ship sits below the water line.
- IMO / MMSI
- A ship’s permanent ID, and the number its radio uses. The MMSI’s first three digits show the country it’s registered in.
- Doing / Heading to
- Typed in by the crew, so it can be out of date. Cable ships often type an activity instead, like “CABLE OPS” (cable work at sea).
France