US Coast Guard Vessel Inspections Scraper

Ship safety records from the US Coast Guard's public vessel database: who the hull is, how big it is, what certificates it carries, and every inspection it has been through, down to the inspector's own words on each deficiency and whether the ship was detained.

This is the record buyers usually have to pay a maritime data terminal for. It comes back structured, filterable and ready to score.

Here is one real result, trimmed to show the shape of the output:

{
  "vesselId": "1162376",
  "vesselName": "CMB POMEROL",
  "callSign": "3FSK9",
  "imoNumber": "9598335",
  "officialNumber": null,
  "identificationType": "IMO Number",
  "flag": "PANAMA",
  "serviceType": "Freight Ship",
  "serviceSubType": "Bulk Carrier",
  "status": "Active",
  "isActive": true,
  "buildYear": 2012,
  "vesselAgeYears": 14,
  "lengthFeet": 770.9,
  "lengthMeters": 234.97,
  "lengthBetweenPerpendicularsFeet": 744.8,
  "breadthFeet": 124.7,
  "breadthMeters": 38.01,
  "depthFeet": 65.3,
  "draftFeet": 47.5,
  "grossTonnage": 50617,
  "netTonnage": 31470,
  "deadweightTons": 95731,
  "displacementTons": 110378,
  "classificationSocieties": ["NKK"],
  "certificateCount": 13,
  "activeCertificateCount": 4,
  "expiredCertificateCount": 9,
  "nextCertificateExpiry": null,
  "certificates": [
    {
      "type": "ISM - Safety Management Certificate",
      "issuedBy": "NKK",
      "status": "EXPIRED",
      "issueDate": "2017-07-04",
      "expiryDate": "2022-06-15"
    }
  ],
  "inspectionCount": 4,
  "portStateControlInspectionCount": 3,
  "inspectionsWithDeficiencies": 1,
  "deficiencyCount": 1,
  "unresolvedDeficiencyCount": 0,
  "deficienciesPerInspection": 0.25,
  "detentionCount": 0,
  "detentionDeficiencyCount": 0,
  "hasDetention": false,
  "firstInspectionDate": "2013-08-19",
  "lastInspectionDate": "2019-10-22",
  "lastDetentionDate": null,
  "daysSinceLastInspection": 2496,
  "deficiencySystems": [
    { "system": "06 - Cargo Operations Including Equipment", "count": 1 }
  ],
  "inspectionPorts": ["Mobile, Alabama", "Baltimore, Maryland"],
  "inspections": [
    {
      "activityId": "6420994",
      "date": "2019-10-21",
      "type": "Vessel Inspection",
      "status": "Closed",
      "outcome": "Approved Inspection",
      "port": "Mobile, Alabama",
      "isPortStateControl": true,
      "deficiencyCount": 1,
      "unresolvedDeficiencyCount": 0,
      "detentionDeficiencyCount": 0,
      "wasDetained": false,
      "deficiencies": [
        {
          "description": "When transporting a solid bulk cargo which is liable to emit a toxic or flammable gas, or cause oxygen depletion in the cargo space, an appropriate instrument for measuring the concentration of gas or oxygen in the air shall be provided together with detailed instructions for its use. PSCO noted that the calibration gas has been expired since May 2013. Manual for gas detector specifies that expired gas shall not be used. SOLAS (14) VI/3.1",
          "system": "06 - Cargo Operations Including Equipment",
          "component": "06105 - Atmosphere testing instruments",
          "action": "17 - Rectify deficiencies prior to departure",
          "actionCode": "17",
          "isDetention": false,
          "isResolved": true,
          "resolutionDate": "2019-10-22"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "psixUrl": "https://cgmix.uscg.mil/PSIX/PSIXDetails.aspx?VesselID=1162376",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-22T22:04:11.902Z"
}

What you get

Vessel identity — name, IMO number, official number, call sign, flag state, service type and sub-type (crude oil tank ship, bulk carrier, passenger ship, offshore supply vessel and the rest), registry status and build year, with age already calculated.

Size — overall length and length between perpendiculars, breadth, moulded depth and design draft, in feet and in metres. Gross, net, deadweight and displacement tonnage, normalised. Gross and net are filed by the registry under unit labels rather than names, so most exports of this data lose them entirely; here they come back as plain grossTonnage and netTonnage.

Certificates — the document file with issue and expiry dates and the issuing organisation: safety management (ISM), load line, oil and air pollution prevention (IOPP, IAPP), classification documents, certificates of inspection. classificationSocieties pulls out the class society, and nextCertificateExpiry and daysToNextCertificateExpiry tell you what lapses next.

Inspection history — every recorded inspection with its date, type, outcome, Coast Guard zone port, and a flag marking the Port State Control exams that drive foreign-flag targeting.

Deficiency detail — this is the part that matters. Each deficiency carries the inspector's full written finding, usually with the SOLAS or MARPOL reference, plus the system, sub-system and component codes, the action code the Coast Guard applied, whether it has been resolved, and the resolution text and date.

Detention flags — deficiencies carrying action code 30 are detentions. hasDetention, detentionCount, detentionDeficiencyCount and lastDetentionDate are pre-computed at the vessel level, and wasDetained at the inspection level, so a problem hull sorts to the top without any post-processing.

Risk rollups — deficiencyCount, unresolvedDeficiencyCount, deficienciesPerInspection, daysSinceLastInspection, inspectionPorts and deficiencySystems (deficiency counts grouped by ship system, worst first) turn a raw history into something you can rank on.

Ways to search

Mode	What it does
By vessel name	Partial match. MAERSK returns EFFIE MAERSK, MAERSK NEWBURY and the rest
By IMO / official number / call sign	Exact lookups from a list. An IMO prefix is ignored, and numbers and call signs can be mixed in the same list
Fleet sweep	Every vessel under a flag state and/or a service type, optionally bounded by build years

Filters

Filters are applied before a record is counted, so you only pay for rows you asked for.

• detentionsOnly — only inspections that detained the ship. The fastest route to a problem-tonnage list
• portStateControlOnly — only the foreign-flag Port State Control exams
• withDeficienciesOnly and unresolvedDeficienciesOnly — drop clean inspections, or keep only findings still open
• minDeficiencies — skip vessels below a deficiency count
• deficiencySystem — findings against one system: Fire Safety, Pollution Prevention, Life Saving Appliances, Cargo Operations
• deficiencyKeyword — free text inside the inspector's narrative: lifeboat, corrosion, ISM, oily water separator
• portContains — inspections at a given port or state
• inspectionDateFrom and inspectionDateTo — the inspection window
• flagFilter, serviceTypeFilter, statusFilter, buildYearFrom, buildYearTo — narrow the fleet itself
• includeDeficiencies, includeCertificates, includeDimensions, includeTonnage — switch off what you do not need for a faster, lighter run
• outputLevel — one rich row per vessel with inspections nested, or one flat row per inspection for pivoting

Who is it for

Use case	Who benefits
Charterer and owner vetting	Operators screening a hull's detention and deficiency record before fixing
Marine insurance and P&I	Underwriters pricing risk on age, class, deficiency density and detention history
Ship finance and sale-and-purchase	Analysts checking condition history and certificate status behind a valuation
Port and terminal safety	Terminals flagging inbound tonnage with open deficiencies
Class societies and consultants	Benchmarking deficiency patterns by flag, system and vessel type
Maritime research and journalism	Tracing substandard shipping, flag-of-convenience patterns and pollution enforcement

Tips

• detentionsOnly with a flag state and a build-year range is the quickest way to build a substandard-tonnage watchlist for a registry.
• deficiencyKeyword searches the inspector's own text, so it finds things no code list captures. oily water separator and magic pipe both surface pollution cases.
• Set outputLevel to inspection when you want to chart deficiencies over time; keep it on vessel when you want one row per ship for a CRM or a risk model.
• maxInspectionsPerVessel controls both depth and speed. Lower it for a broad fleet inventory, raise it for a full history on a short list.
• maxRecords is a hard cap and controls run cost.

FAQ and troubleshooting

Which vessels are covered? Vessels recorded by the US Coast Guard, which includes US-flag vessels and the foreign-flag ships that call at US ports. A ship that has never traded to the United States will not be there.

Does it cover Port State Control outside the US? No. This is the US record. isPortStateControl marks the exams the Coast Guard itself classifies as Port State Control related.

How do I tell a detention from an ordinary deficiency? By the action code. Code 30 is a detention and is surfaced as isDetention on the deficiency and wasDetained on the inspection. Codes such as 17 and 40 mean rectify before departure or before the next US port, which are findings, not detentions.

Why is nextCertificateExpiry empty on some ships? Because every certificate on file has already lapsed, which usually means the vessel has not been in US waters recently. The certificate list still shows what was held and when it expired.

Why do some vessels have no inspections? They are on the register but have no recorded inspection inside the date window. Widen inspectionDateFrom, or accept that the hull has no US inspection history.

Why did a very broad search return nothing? The registry refuses to answer a query above its own result ceiling, and answers with an empty set rather than a truncated one. The actor detects this and splits the query by build year automatically, and says so in the run log when it does. Hulls with no recorded build year cannot be reached that way, so a split sweep is reported as partial rather than complete.

Are owners and operators included? No. The public vessel record covers identity, dimensions, tonnage, documents and inspection history. Ownership and management are not part of it.

How fresh is the data? It is read live on every run. scrapedAt records when each row was collected.

Do I need an API key or credentials? No. The record is public and the actor needs nothing from you beyond the search input.

What happens if a lookup fails? That vessel is skipped and the run continues. Nothing is charged for a record that could not be retrieved.

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Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the United States Coast Guard. All data is read from publicly available records.