Our approach
Ocean Liner Curator is built as an evidence-first historical reference. The goal is not to make every subject sound certain, complete, or dramatic. The goal is to make the strongest account the available evidence can responsibly support.
Research begins with a question, a ship, an object, a claim, or a historical relationship. From there, information is gathered, compared, placed in context, and reviewed before it becomes part of the public reference work.
The process is deliberately revisable. A published page is not treated as permanently finished simply because it is online.
The working principles
Evidence before repetition
A claim does not become reliable merely because it appears on many websites or has been repeated for decades. Where possible, commonly repeated statements are traced back to contemporary records, company material, archival sources, photographs, period publications, or reputable historical scholarship.
Context before certainty
Historical evidence can be incomplete, contradictory, imprecise, or shaped by the assumptions of its own period. When the record does not justify certainty, Ocean Liner Curator says so rather than filling the gap with speculation.
Clarity without sensationalism
Ocean liner history contains disasters, rivalries, remarkable engineering, social inequality, wartime service, commercial ambition, and extraordinary human stories. Those subjects do not need exaggeration to be interesting. The editorial preference is for proportion, context, and clear explanation.
Revision is part of the work
New evidence, better sources, corrected dates, improved attribution, and stronger interpretations can change a page. Corrections are not regarded as failures of the reference work; they are part of maintaining one responsibly.
From question to publication
Not every page follows an identical path, but the research and editorial process generally moves through the same stages.
1. Define the question
The first step is identifying what the page or record is actually trying to establish. A useful research question is narrower than “tell the story” and specific enough to distinguish known facts from assumptions, interpretation, and unresolved points.
2. Gather sources
Sources may include contemporary newspapers, shipping-company publications, passenger material, photographs, plans, menus, brochures, archival documents, museum records, scholarly works, recognized maritime histories, and other relevant evidence.
3. Compare and cross-check
Important facts are compared across sources where possible. Differences are examined rather than automatically harmonized. A later source may correct an earlier one, but a newer publication is not assumed to be more accurate simply because it is newer.
4. Separate evidence from interpretation
Documentary facts, reasonable inference, historical interpretation, and unresolved questions are not treated as interchangeable. The wording of a page should reflect the strength of the underlying evidence.
5. Draft for the reader
Research is translated into clear public-facing prose without stripping away the qualifications that matter. The objective is accessibility without false simplicity.
6. Review before publication
Public-facing material is reviewed by a human curator for factual consistency, source alignment, clarity, internal coherence, and conformity with Ocean Liner Curator’s editorial standards.
7. Revisit when necessary
Publication is not the end of the research process. Pages may be corrected, expanded, reorganized, or reinterpreted when stronger evidence becomes available or when existing material can be made clearer.
How sources are weighed
Source type matters, but no category of source is automatically infallible. A contemporary company brochure can be authoritative about one fact and promotional about another. A newspaper may preserve invaluable eyewitness reporting while also repeating an early error. A respected secondary work may synthesize decades of research yet still depend on an incorrect earlier source.
We look for:
- Proximity to the event, object, or subject
- Identifiable authorship or institutional origin
- Specific supporting evidence
- Consistency with independent sources
- Clear provenance and context
- Evidence that can be checked by others
We are cautious about:
- Claims repeated without an identifiable source
- Marketing language presented as neutral description
- Retrospective stories that cannot be independently supported
- Exact claims derived from ambiguous photographs or objects
- Confident language where the surviving record is incomplete
- Apparent consensus created by sources copying one another
More detail is available in Sources & Standards and the Definitive Guide to Research Standards.
When the answer is uncertain
Historical research often produces degrees of confidence rather than a binary choice between “known” and “unknown.” Ocean Liner Curator uses wording such as documented, reported, attributed, likely, possibly, disputed, or unknown when those distinctions matter.
An unresolved question is preferable to a neat answer unsupported by evidence. Where reasonable interpretations differ, the disagreement may itself be part of the historical record worth preserving.
Objects, photographs & attribution
Material culture requires a different kind of caution. A physical object may be authentic to a period without being demonstrably connected to the ship claimed for it. A photograph may be correctly dated but incorrectly captioned. A fitting can resemble a known shipboard design without documented provenance linking it to that vessel.
Attribution therefore depends on the total evidence: markings, construction, provenance, documentary history, comparison material, period imagery, known ownership, and the quality of the chain connecting an object or image to a specific ship.
The aim is not to dismiss uncertain material, but to describe its evidentiary status accurately.
Digital tools & AI
Ocean Liner Curator uses digital tools to help organize research, inspect large bodies of material, maintain internal consistency, identify relationships between pages, assist with drafting, and support technical publishing work.
AI-assisted tools, including Ocean Liner GPT and general-purpose language models, are treated as tools rather than historical authorities. They may help structure or test work, but their output does not establish a fact.
For public-facing material:
- AI-generated claims are not accepted merely because they are plausible
- Historical assertions are checked against sources
- Interpretation remains human-led
- Published material receives human review
- Responsibility for the final work rests with Ocean Liner Curator, not the tool used to assist with it
See the AI Interpretation Policy and Ocean Liner GPT & AI Methodology for the fuller policy.
Corrections, changes & revision
Ocean Liner Curator is a maintained reference rather than a frozen publication. Errors can be corrected, descriptions clarified, sources strengthened, and interpretations revised.
Source-backed corrections and contextual additions are welcome. When a reader identifies a possible problem, the preferred response is to examine the evidence rather than defend existing wording simply because it has already been published.
Readers can use the feedback mechanism available on individual pages or the contact page. Supporting sources are especially helpful.
Preservation & continuity
The work is not limited to publishing individual pages. Ocean Liner Curator also develops structured records, internal research systems, archival references, digital tools, and reusable datasets intended to make the accumulated knowledge easier to maintain and preserve.
That work supports a larger goal: historical information should remain understandable, traceable, and usable beyond the moment in which it was first collected.
Institutional responsibility
Ocean Liner Curator is the public-facing research and reference institution responsible for the historical work, editorial standards, collections context, and educational material presented through the site.
Ocean Liner Curator LLC is its legal, publishing, and administrative steward. The LLC supports the institution’s continuity, digital infrastructure, intellectual property, formal agreements, software development, and preservation work.
The organizational structure supports the research mission; it does not replace it.
What evidence-first means here
Evidence-first does not mean that every historical question has a definitive answer. It means the strength of the conclusion should never exceed the strength of the evidence supporting it.
When something is known, say what is known. When it is probable, explain why. When sources disagree, preserve the disagreement. When the answer is unknown, leave room for the unknown.
