What This Site Is
Ocean Liner Curator is a reference project focused on historic passenger ships and their material culture. The emphasis is on evidence, attribution limits, and careful interpretation—especially where certainty is often overstated elsewhere.
- Clear definitions and historical context for ocean liners
- Essays on attribution, provenance, and evidentiary limits
- Reference material intended to support careful collecting and research
- Cross-linked pages designed to be read in any order
What This Site Is Not
- Not a marketplace, valuation guide, or appraisal service
- Not a ship-attribution engine that assigns certainty without evidence
- Not a news site or content feed optimized for novelty
- Not a fan archive where “claimed” equals “confirmed”
AI Use & Transparency
Ocean Liner Curator uses AI-assisted tools to support research, organization, and explanation. AI is treated as a research aid—not an authority—and does not replace historical judgment.
AI tools may assist with summarizing information, identifying patterns, and clarifying context, but they do not authenticate objects, assign ship-specific attribution, confirm provenance, or provide valuations or market advice.
Where evidence is limited or inconclusive, uncertainty is preserved. AI-assisted material follows the same evidence-first standards applied throughout the site.
For formal boundaries and limitations, see the AI Interpretation Policy.
Use of or interaction with AI is completely optional; this site is designed to offer AI as a choice but does not rely on it.
Path 1 — Definitions
If you’re new to ocean liners (or want a grounded definition that separates liners from other ships), begin here: What Are Ocean Liners?
Path 2 — Collecting
If you encounter ship-related artifacts and want a conservative framework for evidence, provenance, and attribution limits: Ocean Liner Collecting: A Curated Guide
Path 3 — Research
Start with Ocean Liner Research: Sources, Methods, and Evidence and Research Standards. If you’re curious about Ocean Liner GPT or how AI is constrained within an evidence-first historical method: Ocean Liner GPT — AI Use & Methodology
How the Project Is Structured
The site is intentionally cross-referenced. Many pages link outward to definitions, standards, and adjacent essays where context matters. You do not need to read the project in order.
If you are here because of a specific object, listing, or claim, the most reliable starting point is often What Counts as Evidence in Ocean Liner Collecting? followed by Why “Unknown” Is a Responsible Conclusion.
A Note on Certainty
Throughout Ocean Liner Curator, conclusions are limited to what surviving evidence supports. Where evidence is incomplete, uncertainty is preserved and stated explicitly. In maritime material culture, “unknown” is often the most responsible answer.