How to read this site
You do not need any of this to use the site. It is here because we would rather show our working.
Type tells you what moves
Harbour charts letter what is fixed differently from what floats, so a reader can tell rock from ship at a glance. We borrowed the idea: on this site, the type itself says which things move.
- Coral Princess · Ritz-Carlton LuminaraShip names lean, because ships move. Anything set in true italic sails.
- Ketchikan · JuneauPorts, terminals and cruise lines stand upright, because they stay put.
- $2,890How a verified fare looks: the underline means we checked the figure against a published source. This one is only an example of the notation, not a fare.
- not publishedWhen a value is missing, we write the words. Never a dash, and never an invented number.
- [8]A figure in brackets is one we worked out ourselves rather than read from a source. You will meet this notation only here and in the densest expert views.
One colour means one thing
Every blue on this site belongs to one ordered scale, running from deep water to dry land. The deeper the shade, the more it stands for — deeper water, a longer crossing. If a shade cannot name the amount it encodes, we do not use it.
- DeepestThe deepest water on our maps.
- DeepRoute lines and sea-day bars.
- ShelvingThe underline beneath a place you can visit.
- Nearing shoreThe longest crossings, ocean to ocean.
- ShallowCoastwise crossings, and the heads of tables.
- ShallowerThe fill behind panels and modules.
- ShallowestAlternating rows in long lists.
- DryingIn between: tender ports, provisional schedules, partial data.
- LandAshore, in port, inactive, or already past.
One colour sits outside the scale. Magenta means lit, live, under way, caution — and nothing else, ever. It is never decoration: when you see it, the site is claiming that something is happening right now. On a ship, the claim looks like this:
Under way
The marks on maps and lists
The small marks below appear on our maps and beside our tables. Each one means one thing, and the same thing everywhere. None of them needs to be memorised — wherever a mark matters, the words are always nearby.
- Live positionA ship there now
- AnchorageWhere ships wait or hold
- BeaconA fixed mark on the shore
- Buoy (lit)A floating mark, lit at night
- TerminalThe cruise terminal building
- BerthWhere the ship ties up
- Departure portWhere the cruise starts
- Port of callThe ship stops here
- Tender portNo dock — you go ashore by boat
- GlacierIce viewing, no landing
- At seaA day with no port
- ArrivesThe ship comes in
- DepartsThe ship leaves
- HarbourmasterThe port authority
- Permit requiredEntry is capped
- Traffic laneWhere ships are routed
- Local timeAlways the port's own clock
- Live webcamA camera at this port
- ScheduleA list of what is coming
- Season dataOur own analysis
Where the numbers come from
Nearly every figure on this site — a fare, a count of sailings, the length of a season — is computed from our own database at the moment the page is put together. We do not paste numbers into sentences, because pasted numbers go stale and nobody notices.
Where a figure has been checked against a published source, it is underlined, the way the verified fare was shown above. Where a source does not publish a value, we write "not published" and leave the space honest. We never fill a gap with a guess, and we never print a dash and hope you read it as an answer.
When we are wrong
Sometimes we are wrong anyway. When that happens, the correction is made in place — the page you are reading changes, and stays changed. We would rather you catch us fixing something than leave two versions of the truth in circulation.
The conventions live on this page; the words have one of their own. Read the full glossary for the terms we use.