Every Ship Has a Secret Resume

In 2011, a Japanese shipyard delivered a bulk carrier called 21 Glory. She was 37,000 deadweight tonnes — a handymax, built to carry grain, coal, and steel through the regional trade lanes of the Pacific.

Stamped into her classification record was this:

NS*(BCM-A, BC-XII, GRAB)(PS-DA&FA)(IWS) MNS*

That is not a random string. It is a professional credential — a coded statement, issued by a classification society, that specifies what this ship is built to do, what she has been inspected for, and what she is permitted to carry.

Lloyd's Register began recording ship conditions in a London coffee house in 1760. The core concept has not changed: independent examination, encoded into standardized formats. The notation string is the output.

Reading the Notation

Here is what 21 Glory's notation means, token by token:

Token	Meaning
NS*	Hull notation by ClassNK; asterisk indicates approved plans and surveyed construction
BCM-A	Bulk carrier strengthened for heavy cargo in all holds with alternate loading approval
BC-XII	SOLAS Chapter XII bulk carrier structural compliance
GRAB	Hull reinforced for grab (mechanical clamshell) discharge
PS-DA&FA	Structural strength program using Direct Analysis and Fatigue Assessment
IWS	In-Water Survey eligibility — divers instead of dry-dock
MNS*	Machinery notation with full-survey standard

A vessel without BCM-A would be unsuitable for iron ore with alternating empty holds.

The GRAB notation deserves special attention. Grab discharge means a crane lowers a massive clamshell bucket into the hold and scoops cargo out. The impact on the tank top — the hull interior — is enormous. Vessels rated for grab discharge have reinforced scantlings: thicker plating, stronger frames, additional stiffening. A vessel without this reinforcement risks structural damage during or after grab operations.

The Rosetta Stone Problem

There is no universal notation language. Each classification society invented its own.

There are approximately a dozen major societies worldwide (IACS members), and they encode identical capabilities differently:

• Bulk carrier heavy cargo: BCM-A (ClassNK) vs BC-A (Bureau Veritas, CCS, Korean Register)
• Unattended machinery: M0 (ClassNK), AUT-UMS (Bureau Veritas), AUT-0 (CCS), UMA (Korean Register)

Korean Register wraps notations in single quotes. CCS uses Unicode parentheses. One Bureau Veritas vessel had a notation string that was 847 characters long — with occasional full-width Unicode parentheses mixed in.

Our first attempt at a cross-society parser took about a day to write and about three weeks to debug.

Classification societies predate international standardization bodies by over a century. Lloyd's Register predated the first International Load Line Convention (1930) by 170 years. By the time anyone thought about harmonization, the notation formats were embedded in thousands of certificates, contracts, and insurance policies. Only Common Structural Rules (adopted 2006, harmonized 2015) achieved genuine cross-society alignment — which is why CSR appears nearly identically across societies.

What We Built

We built collectors for six classification societies, parsing notation strings without normalization. The rationale: the notation string is a legal document, and paraphrasing a legal document is how you get sued.

curl "https://api.vesselapi.com/v1/vessel/9468217/classification?filter.idType=imo" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

{
  "classification": {
    "identification": {
      "vesselName": "21 GLORY",
      "imoNumber": "9468217",
      "flagName": "Singapore",
      "classStatusString": "In Class"
    },
    "classification": {
      "mainClass": "NS*",
      "classNotationString": "NS*(BCM-A, BC-XII, GRAB)(PS-DA&FA)(IWS) MNS*"
    },
    "surveys": [
      { "survey": "Special Survey", "lastDate": "21 Jan 2026", "dueFrom": "14 Sep 2030", "dueTo": null },
      { "survey": "Intermediate Survey", "dueFrom": "14 Jun 2027", "dueTo": "14 Dec 2027" },
      { "survey": "Annual Survey", "dueFrom": "14 Jun 2026", "dueTo": "14 Dec 2026" }
    ],
    "yard": {
      "hullYardName": "SAIKI HEAVY INDUSTRIES CO., LTD.",
      "keelDate": "10 Dec 2010",
      "dateOfBuild": "22 Apr 2011"
    },
    "dimensions": {
      "dwt": 37202,
      "grossTon69": 22863
    }
  }
}

Coverage

Classification Society	Vessels with Notation Data
Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (ClassNK)	~8,900
Det Norske Veritas (DNV)	~8,300
Bureau Veritas (BV)	~7,500
China Classification Society (CCS)	~4,000
Registro Italiano Navale (RINA)	~2,800
Korean Register (KR)	~1,900
Total	~33,400

Not all vessels carry additional notations; some older or simpler ships have only base class symbols.

What the Notation String Decides

Cargo Suitability. The notation determines cargo compatibility. For iron ore shipments, charterers verify for BC-A (or equivalent) and GRAB. A BC-B vessel has restrictions on hold usage and draught, affecting loading patterns and structural safety. Getting this wrong is not a paperwork problem. It is a the-ship-might-break problem.

Survey Cycles. 21 Glory's record shows a Special Survey completed January 21, 2026, with the next due by September 2030. The Special Survey is the big one — a comprehensive inspection every five years, often requiring dry-docking, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Vessels near their deadline face potential delays, detention risk, or class loss if certification lapses.

Compliance Signals. Notations like PSPC-WBT (ballast tank protective coatings) and IHM (Inventory of Hazardous Materials) signal IMO convention compliance. In some ports, missing an expected notation is functionally an invitation to be boarded and detained by port state control.

Operational Quality Proxy. Notations including ESP (Enhanced Survey Programme), IWS, and CMS (Continuous Machinery Survey) correlate with better maintenance. They are a useful filter when screening numerous vessel candidates — not definitive proof of quality, but a signal.

Try It

The endpoint is at /vessel/{id}/classification?filter.idType=imo. Lloyd's Register and ABS are on the roadmap.

Somewhere right now, a surveyor is climbing into a ballast tank with a flashlight and an ultrasonic thickness gauge, measuring the steel plate by plate, writing down what she finds. The notation string is the output. We just make it queryable.