Availability of descriptive ship metadata

Question

I'm creating my own ship position map by AIS (Automatic Identification System) messages from the base transceiver station (BTS).

Can I find a free database of static information about the ships by MMSI (Maritime Mobility Service Identity) number ?

I need only ship name, type and dimensions.

Answer 1

All moving ship use the AIS stream to transmit static data using ShipStaticData messages, that show some characteristics of the ship

ShipStaticData: {
      AisVersion: 0,
      CallSign: '9V2881 ',
      Destination: 'GR AGT              ',
      Dimension: [Object],
      Dte: false,
      Eta: [Object],
      FixType: 1,
      ImoNumber: 9324306,
      MaximumStaticDraught: 13,
      MessageID: 5,
      Name: 'PM IMPERIAL         ',
      RepeatIndicator: 0,
      Spare: false,
      Type: 89,
      UserID: 564956000,
      Valid: true
    }

The Dimension property includes some information on the dimensions of the ship. You can try and wait until it sails on the vicinity of some station, and grab that data. Other than that, you can try VesselFinder which will give you its current position; it's not available via API as far as I can tell.