Vessel Characteristics

WCSC Vessel Characteristics includes Data on U.S. vessels contained in the Waterborne Transportation Lines of the United States (WTLUS). The data is collected annually on a calendar year basis, by authority of 33 USC § 555,  and is published the following year.

Schedule K Classification

Effective April 7, 2003, the Army Corps of Engineers assumed responsibility for maintaining the "Schedule K", Classification of Foreign Ports by Geographic Trade Area and Country from the Maritime Administration. The Schedule K lists the major seaports of the world directly handling waterborne shipments in the foreign trade of the United States, and includes numeric codes identifying these ports.

This information is used by the trade community to report foreign seaports of loading and unloading in U.S. foreign trade transactions. In addition, the port codes are used by the U.S. Customs Service for vessel movement reports. The ports are grouped according to the country arrangement in U.S. Census Schedule C, Classification of Country Designations for U.S. Foreign Trade Statistics, effective January 1, 2003. The Schedule K is available in code, name, and sort to search for or download codes. In addition, Schedule K Codes for identifying inland origin or destination provinces and states in Canada and Mexico are available for view.These are the only Schedule K codes that do not represent seaport locations. These codes are not shown in the code,name and country sorts mentioned in the prior paragraph.

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Foreign Cargo

These files represent cargo flows between United States ports/Waterways and foreign ports.

Entrances and Clearances

These files contain the following data for each major port or waterway: the date a vessel made entry into (entrance record) or cleared (clearance record) the U.S. Customs port; the vessel's full name; the type of vessel by one digit rig type or ICST (International Classification of Ships by Type) code; the vessel's flag of registry; the vessel's last (entrance record) or next (clearance record) port of call, whether foreign or domestic; the vessel's Net and Gross Registered Tonnage; and each vessel's draft in feet.