Search NARA College Park Master Ship ListThe Master Ship List is a finding aid used to locate records in the Cartographic Branch of the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, MD. This list has entries for almost all of the ships for which they know they have drawings, plans, microfiche or microfilm available. This list tells you only if the archivists know something is available for a given ship, but not how much and not what quality. This list was updated last in Mar 2011, eventually it will be available on the NARA web site and will be more current so be sure to check the NARA site and the finding aids in College Park. The results contain enough information that the archivist can help you find those items.The NARA archives has plans for many non-commissioned ships and some Maritime Commission ships. Most of their collection is from before 1946. As a rule, ship plans are not transferred to their holdings until quite some time after they are stricken from the U.S. Navy rolls. This time span is normally 25 years after the ship, or more often, when the last ship of her class is stricken from the Navy rolls. Not all commissioned ships have plans and often the plans are not complete. "Simple Search" queries should work for most researchers. The database will be searched for the appearance of the search string anywhere in the database. Note that the query word order matters. For example, "Tank Landing Craft" does not generate the same result at "Landing Craft Tank".
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