maritime_search_tracks
Search historical ship tracks from the CLIWOC database (1662-1855) by nationality, date range, geographic bounding box, or ship name.
Instructions
Search historical ship tracks from the CLIWOC database (1662-1855).
Returns voyage track summaries from ~261K daily logbook observations recorded by 8 European maritime nations. Each track represents one voyage with dated lat/lon positions from the ship's logbook. Supports cursor-based pagination and geographic bounding box filtering.
Args: nationality: Two-letter nationality code to filter by. Options: NL (Dutch), UK (British), ES (Spanish), FR (French), SE (Swedish), US (American), DE (German), DK (Danish) year_start: Earliest year to include (e.g., 1700) year_end: Latest year to include (e.g., 1750) ship_name: Ship name or partial name (case-insensitive; requires CLIWOC 2.1 Full data) lat_min: Minimum latitude — track must have at least one position in the bounding box (e.g., -50 for Roaring Forties south bound) lat_max: Maximum latitude (e.g., -30 for Roaring Forties north bound) lon_min: Minimum longitude (e.g., 15 for Indian Ocean west bound) lon_max: Maximum longitude (e.g., 110 for Indian Ocean east bound) max_results: Maximum results per page (default: 50, max: 500) cursor: Pagination cursor from a previous result's next_cursor field output_mode: Response format - "json" (default) or "text"
Returns: JSON or text with matching track summaries and pagination metadata
Tips for LLMs: - Use nationality filter to find ships of a specific nation - Combine year_start/year_end to narrow to a specific period - Use lat_min/lat_max/lon_min/lon_max to find tracks passing through a geographic region (e.g., lat_min=-50, lat_max=-30 for Roaring Forties) - Results show track summaries (start/end dates, position count) - If has_more is true, pass next_cursor as cursor to get the next page - Follow up with maritime_get_track to get full position data - Use maritime_nearby_tracks to find ships near a wreck site - CLIWOC covers 1662-1855 with most data from 1750-1850 - Nationality breakdown: UK (732), NL (677), ES (472), FR (85)
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| nationality | No | ||
| year_start | No | ||
| year_end | No | ||
| ship_name | No | ||
| lat_min | No | ||
| lat_max | No | ||
| lon_min | No | ||
| lon_max | No | ||
| max_results | No | ||
| cursor | No | ||
| output_mode | No | json |