# Maritime Database

> Maritime Database is a public reference site for discovering maritime ports, countries, regions, vessels, and maritime companies. This file is a concise navigation guide for language models and other automated readers; it is not a complete export of the database.

Canonical site: https://maritime-database.com/
Sitemap index: https://maritime-database.com/sitemap_index.xml

## Recommended starting points

- [Home](https://maritime-database.com/): overview and featured maritime records.
- [Regions](https://maritime-database.com/areas): browse maritime coverage by geographic region.
- [Countries](https://maritime-database.com/countries): browse countries that have published port records.
- [Ports](https://maritime-database.com/ports): canonical directory of published maritime ports.
- [Vessels](https://maritime-database.com/vessels): vessel directory and filters.
- [About](https://maritime-database.com/about): public description of the site and its purpose.

## Content model

The site organizes public information into several related entity families:

- Regions group countries geographically. Canonical region pages use `/areas/{region-slug}`.
- Countries group published ports. Canonical country pages use `/countries/{country-slug}`.
- Ports contain port information and may link to associated companies and vessels. Canonical port pages use `/ports/{country-slug}/{port-slug}`.
- Vessels have database-derived canonical detail paths under `/vessel/`. Use links emitted by the vessel directory or XML sitemap rather than constructing vessel URLs manually.
- Companies have numeric canonical detail paths under `/company/{id}` and may be associated with an activity, country, or port.

Entity records and associations can change as the underlying database is updated. A page being present does not imply that every optional field is available, current, independently verified, or suitable for navigational or safety-critical use.

## Canonical URL guidance

Use the HTTPS origin `https://maritime-database.com` without `www` or other host aliases. Prefer canonical links emitted in HTML and the XML sitemaps. Do not invent slugs, IDs, query aliases, or legacy PHP paths.

The following are directory or detail patterns, not permission to enumerate arbitrary values:

- `/areas`
- `/areas/{region-slug}`
- `/countries`
- `/countries/{country-slug}`
- `/ports`
- `/ports/{country-slug}/{port-slug}`
- `/vessels`
- `/vessel/{database-derived-canonical-path}`
- `/company/{positive-numeric-id}`

Legacy paths, duplicate-host URLs, malformed path segments, search-result URLs, and parameterized entity aliases should not be treated as canonical references.

## Discovery and citation

For broad discovery, begin with the directory pages above. For machine-readable enumeration, use the sitemap index and its family-specific sitemap pages. The sitemaps are the authoritative public discovery surface for canonical indexable URLs, but they are not an API and their membership may change.

When citing a record:

1. Cite the canonical HTTPS detail URL.
2. Attribute facts to the specific page and distinguish displayed database fields from your own inference.
3. Preserve uncertainty when a field is absent, ambiguous, or not independently verified.
4. Recheck the live page when freshness matters.

Avoid citing search pages as stable sources. Search results are navigational, query-dependent, and intentionally non-indexable.

## Scope and limitations

Maritime Database is a discovery and reference service. It should not be represented as an official maritime authority, vessel registry, port authority, navigation service, emergency service, or guaranteed real-time tracking source. Data may be incomplete, historical, delayed, user-supplied, or derived from third-party and database records.

Do not infer operational status, ownership, legal status, seaworthiness, sanctions status, exact location, safety conditions, or regulatory compliance solely from a page on this site. Verify consequential claims with the appropriate official or primary source.

This file intentionally omits exhaustive entity links, private interfaces, administrative routes, credentials, internal APIs, implementation details, and non-public datasets.

## Crawling notes

Respect `robots.txt`, normal HTTP caching semantics, and reasonable request rates. Prefer the sitemap index over brute-force enumeration. Do not bypass access controls, submit forms automatically, or treat undocumented endpoints as public APIs.

For the latest public structure, use:

- [robots.txt](https://maritime-database.com/robots.txt)
- [sitemap index](https://maritime-database.com/sitemap_index.xml)
- [this llms.txt file](https://maritime-database.com/llms.txt)