Locating Vessels—and Maybe Witnesses—Near the Ghost Boat

One way to look for clues for what happened to the Ghost Boat—which disappeared in the Mediterranean last summer with at least 243 people on board—is to find other ships that were operating in the same area and contact their crews.

After a workshop with shipping investigations expert Giannina Segnini in New York, Kazi Awal and Devansh Mehta—two readers and graduate students (CUNY and Columbia respectively)—took on the job of narrowing down the shipping data brought to light by Kirk Pettinga in order to find nearby vessels which could provide useful information.

Here’s a spreadsheet with each of the 40 vessels listed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hy-xYJDcwvFEWZVEUWiawDop2UV5W0QkcVhlLcinyG0/edit?usp=sharing

Giannina suggested cross-referencing this information with social networks such as CrewToo—essentially a Facebook for seafarers—to see if we could identify individuals who may remember details from the time.

Here’s a quick key to the information in the spreadsheet.

MMSI — Maritime Mobile Service Identity. Kind of like a boat’s phone number.

IMO—International Maritime Organization identification number. This is a unique code assigned to vessel once in its lifetime, and remains the same whether or not the name, ownership or flag changes.

AIS type—A short code that details the kind of vessel. “81,” for example, indicates a tanker carrying dangerous good. More information in this document.

Name—The vessel name. This can change over time, and may have changed since 2014.

Call Sign—International radio call sign assigned to the vessel by its country of registry.

Destination—The port the vessel is heading toward.

If you are able to expand on this information, find out more about the boats themselves, or even identify people who may have been on these ships, please leave notes in the spreadsheet or respond to this post.