Last updated: October 26, 2026
About ChartandKeel
Who publishes this
ChartandKeel is an independent, open-access marine engineering and naval architecture reference. It is published as an organisation and credited to the ChartandKeel editorial team — not to individuals. There are no accounts, no paywall and no advertising.
Today the library holds 275 illustrated topics across six subjects, 23 interactive 3D models and 1,773 ranked oral-exam questions.
How the material is produced
Lessons are compiled from a working library of maritime engineering textbooks, manufacturer manuals, class-society guidance and IMO/ILO convention texts. Source material is extracted, restructured into topic pages and illustrated: figures are traced or cropped from the original document rather than redrawn from memory.
Page references from the source documents are kept in the underlying notes, so a statement in a lesson can be traced back to the publication it came from. Where a convention is central to a lesson, the lesson cites the convention itself in its Standards & sources referenced list.
Sources and standards
The lessons reference these instruments. Those with an official page are linked directly:
- SOLAS — International standards for the safety of life at sea.
- MARPOL — International rules to prevent pollution from ships.
- STCW — International standards for seafarer training, certification and watchkeeping.
- MLC — International minimum working and living standards for seafarers.
- IMO conventions index — the full list of instruments published by the International Maritime Organization.
Codes that are reproduced without a stable public URL — ISM Code, ISPS Code, IGF Code, IGC Code, COLREG, LSA Code, FSS Code, IMDG Code, BWM Convention — are named on the lesson pages rather than linked.
Accuracy and corrections
Every lesson carries a published and an updated date, and the date is changed when the text is corrected. A correction is treated as a content change, not a silent edit: the revised lesson is re-dated and the sitemap's lastmod follows it.
The exam-question bank is ranked by evidence — how many times an examiner asked a question and across how many distinct examiner banks — and states that evidence on every row rather than asserting a difficulty it cannot support.
Scope and disclaimer
ChartandKeel is a study and revision aid. It is not a substitute for the official convention text, the vessel's approved manuals, the class rules or the instructions of the responsible officer. Definitions, criteria and figures quoted for study purposes must be verified against the governing publication before they are acted on at sea.