Finding the ship you are filing for

Your bill of lading names a ship. Customs identifies it by number. This page is about closing that gap: how to find the right hull from a name, how to tell two ships with one name apart, what to do when the ship cannot be found or has no number at all, and why the distinction matters more than it looks. The VCN — the number for one call of that hull — has its own page.

Why is a vessel name not enough?

Because names are not unique and they do not last.

Several ships can carry the same name at once, and a ship is renamed when it changes owner or charter — many are renamed more than once in a working life. So "MV Aurora" identifies a ship the way a first name identifies a person: usually enough in conversation, never enough on a document.

What does identify a hull permanently is its IMO number — seven digits, assigned once when the ship is built and never reused, not even after scrapping. It survives renaming, reflagging and resale. That is why customs works in IMO numbers, and why a filing that names the wrong hull is a rejection rather than a typo.

A rename between booking and arrival does not touch your filing. Neither the IMO number nor a call the port has already registered changes with the name: the IMO belongs to the hull for its whole life, and a VCN belongs to the arrival. So there is nothing to amend, the call goes on being listed, and a ship that shows up here under a different name from the one on your bill of lading is not a signal about the call. The name is the only thing that moved, and the name is the one identifier that is not on the filing.

How do I find a ship if I only have its name?

Type the name where the filing asks for the vessel. The platform searches for hulls that have carried it and offers what it finds, each with its IMO number and — where known — the shipping line and whether customs has a recent call on record for it at an Indian port.

It looks in more than one place:

Ships already seen at Indian ports, learned from filings and from customs' own voyage records. This is the strongest source, because a hull that has called here before is the one you are most likely filing for.Ships other filers on the platform have already identified. Once anyone confirms a name for a hull, everyone searching later finds it.Public ship registers, consulted last. These cover hulls too new or too small to appear anywhere else — a ship delivered this year will often be found only here.

Can I look a ship up without starting a filing?

Yes. The VCN search page — in the header of the public site and of the app, and at scmtr.io/vessels — takes a ship's name, its IMO number or a VCN in one box and shows the ship's calls at Indian ports: each VCN with its port, rotation number and expected arrival, and when customs last listed it. It is for the times you want the answer without a filing open: sizing up a booking, answering a customer who asks when the ship is due, or checking the VCN on an arrival notice.

Signed in or signed out, the search now asks customs directly. For an IMO number, or the ships a VCN is on record for, it asks about the first three and reuses any answer customs gave in the last fifteen minutes. For a name it also looks in Wikidata and the public ship registers, and asks customs about every ship it finds — up to five — reusing an answer from the last twelve hours. The difference signing in makes is only how much of that you get before it falls back to the calls already on record here for a while: about twenty such searches in ten minutes on an account, against about eight in ten minutes shared by everyone searching from the same network when signed out. Once that allowance is spent, every call shown carries the date customs last listed it, so you can judge how old it is.

Three things to know when typing:

Type the whole name as the bill of lading writes it. A voyage after a slash — MAERSK CAMEROUN/629W — is ignored, and part of a name is matched only once the record already holds the ship — which is the case once your allowance for asking customs directly is spent.Seven digits are read as an IMO number and must pass the IMO check digit, so a mistyped number is caught rather than reported as a ship nobody has seen.A VCN is found only where its ship's calls are already on record, for the reason in I have the VCN. Can I get the IMO number from it? — signing in does not change that.

Why does it ask me to sign in?

Only rarely, and never to unlock asking customs — that already happens signed out. It shows up after your network has searched enough in the last ten minutes that its shared allowance runs out, and even then only if the calls already on record here have nothing still to come. A call counts as still to come if its arrival is ahead, undated, or within the last week. Two things are worth knowing before you sign in for the bigger, per-account allowance:

What you see once the allowance is spent is dated. If customs last listed the ship's calls yesterday, a fresh request will very likely say the same.A ship some way off usually has no VCN yet. A VCN is issued only days before arrival (see When does a VCN exist at all?), so "customs lists no upcoming call" is the normal answer for a ship due in a few weeks, asked or not. Check again closer to the date.

What the flags on a result mean

Customs did not repeat this VCN — the VCN you searched was listed for this ship on an earlier answer and was missing from the latest. That is the strongest sign the call was replaced or the cargo moved to another ship; see When the ship changes.Customs' latest answer for this ship looked unreliable — customs has recently answered with nothing for ships it was listing calls for, and the platform does not treat such an answer as proof that the calls are gone. Its calls are shown, but not as current.As of a date more than twelve hours ago — the record is older than the platform normally keeps it, usually because nobody has asked about the ship since.

The page never picks between two ships that share a name. Each is shown with its calls, and More than one ship came back applies here exactly as it does in a filing.

Sending a ship's calls to someone

Each ship in the result has a Share button when there is something definite to send. It opens the message as it will go out — the ship, its IMO number, each VCN with its port and arrival date, and the day and time customs listed them — with Send on WhatsApp one press away, or copy it into an e-mail. The VCNs are in the message as text, so whoever receives it can copy one straight into a filing. The link in it searches the ship by IMO number, so it always means that ship.

That link — and any scmtr.io/vessels?q=… address copied from the browser — shows a preview card in WhatsApp. The card names the ship and its VCNs with their arrival dates only when the answer is definite:

Exactly one ship matches the search. A name two ships share gets the plain VCN search card, because the page does not pick between them either.Customs' answer on record is less than twelve hours old, and is not one flagged unreliable.It lists a call still to come, undated, or arrived within the last week. A link to a VCN shows that one call, for as long as customs still lists it.

When the ship is definite and its calls are not, the card names the ship alone — and only a ship customs has listed a call for at some time; anything less gets the plain VCN search card. A ship's name is printed only when it comes from a published source: a name a filer typed here is never printed, and a search for such a name gets the plain card. A shipping line is named only where customs' own replies have confirmed the operator code as that line's.

"Exactly one ship" means one ship on record here under that name. The search itself also looks in Wikidata and the public ship registers, so the opened page can list a namesake the card did not know of; the card always prints the IMO number of the ship it means, and Share links by IMO number, which no two ships share.

A card says which day's list it shows — "Customs' list of 05/10/2026" — and never "in 3 days": WhatsApp keeps the picture it drew when the message was sent. Opening the link runs the search again, so on a later day trust the link, not the picture.

How the page decides what to ask and when is from the platform's own code, as of 18 September 2026; what a shared link shows, as of 5 October 2026. What customs publishes about a call, and that it publishes calls by IMO number only, is from ICEGATE's public VCN enquiry.

More than one ship came back. Which is mine?

Pick the hull, not the name — they will all share the name, which is exactly why you are being asked.

Three things separate them, in the order worth checking:

A recent call at the port you are filing for. A hull customs has a voyage record for, at your port, around your dates, is almost certainly yours.The shipping line. Compare it against the carrier on your bill of lading.The IMO number itself, against the bill of lading or the carrier's booking confirmation, if either states it. Many do.

Read the absence of a call carefully, because it means two different things. A ship customs lists no call for at any Indian port within two months either side of when it was last asked is a strong sign it is not your ship. A ship with calls elsewhere but none at your port yet is usually timing — its VCN for your arrival may not be issued yet (see When does a VCN exist at all?).

If two candidates still look equally plausible, ask the carrier for the IMO number rather than guessing. A wrong hull is not a small error: it is a filing customs will refuse, and the correction costs you the filing window.

Once you have the hull, there may be more than one call to choose between — the same ship on a monthly loop legitimately shows two or three at the same port. Picking between them is a different question, answered at Customs lists several calls for my ship. Which one is mine?.

The bill names a feeder and a mother vessel — which one do I file?

The feeder — the ship that actually arrives at your Indian port.

The conveyance a CSN declares is the one bringing the cargo into the port you are reporting to. Its IMO number goes in the vessel field, and the conveyance reference is that ship's call at your port. The mother vessel never called at an Indian port on this leg, so no Indian port has issued it a VCN, and there is nothing about it to file in the voyage block.

Where the mother vessel's leg does show up is in the ports: the foreign port where the carrier took charge of the goods is the port of acceptance, whichever hull carried it from there. The transhipment port it changed ships at — Colombo, Singapore, Jebel Ali — does not get a field of its own on a straightforward import. See Which port goes where.

Two practical notes. Feeders are among the ships this search most often cannot find by name, so have the IMO number from the arrival notice ready. And a feeder that is a barge or a small coastal craft may have no IMO number at all, which is a different case with its own answer — see The ship has no IMO number below.

A VCN being per call at one port is ICEGATE's own account, and the port fields are from accepted filings. Applying both to a feeder leg is our reading; no accepted filing we hold has been checked specifically against a transhipped bill.

My bill says TBN — no ship has been nominated yet

Save the draft and wait. There is nothing correct to type.

With no hull nominated there is no IMO number for the vessel field, and no call for a port to have issued — a VCN cannot exist before the ship does. So fill in everything that does not depend on the vessel — the parties, the cargo, the containers, the ports — and come back when the line nominates. A draft with the vessel and conveyance reference both empty is an ordinary saved draft, not a broken one, and nothing reaches customs until you sign it.

Two things not to do. Do not put the service name, the carrier's voyage number or "TBN" in the vessel or conveyance fields. And do not file it as a non-IMO vessel to get past the check: type 11 is for a hull that genuinely has no IMO number — a barge, a coastal craft — not for a hull nobody has named yet.

One thing to know about waiting: the VCN now available email is for a draft that names a ship and has no call. A draft with no ship at all is not watched, because there is nothing to ask customs about. So on a TBN booking the nomination has to reach you from the line — and the moment it does, put the ship in; from then on the wait for the call looks after itself.

The ship was not found at all — what now?

This happens, and it is not a fault in your filing. The most common reasons are a very new ship, a small feeder vessel, an unusual spelling, or a name that includes a prefix (MV, MT, SS) or a voyage number that is not part of the name.

Three things to try, in order:

Trim the name. Drop any MV / MT prefix and any voyage number. "MV NORDIC SPIRIT V.24E" is the ship "NORDIC SPIRIT".Enter the IMO number directly. If you have it from the bill of lading or the carrier, type it in — searching by name is a convenience, never a requirement, and nothing about your filing depends on the search having worked.Look it up externally. Where the search comes up empty, the platform offers links to public vessel databases so you can find the IMO number and bring it back.

If the search instead comes back saying it found the ship but no IMO number for it, you are in a different situation with a different answer — see The ship has no IMO number below. Nothing is wrong with your spelling in that case.

The ship has no IMO number — what do I put in the field?

Put the ship's name in, and set the transport means type to 11 — Non-IMO Vessel.

This is a real and ordinary case, not a workaround. Barges, coastal and inland vessels, and much small craft are never assigned an IMO number at all, which is exactly why typOfTrnsprtMeans has two values: 10 for a vessel that carries one and 11 for a vessel that does not. On 11 the field trnsprtMeansId stops meaning "IMO number" and means "whatever identifies this vessel" — its name, up to 25 characters — and the check-digit rule that applies to an IMO number is not applied.

One honest caveat. That is the shape ICEGATE's message guide specifies. Every filing this platform has seen customs accept so far carried an IMO number, so a type-11 filing has not yet been proven against customs from here — the first one will settle it, and this page will say so when it does.

The search tells you when you are in this case. If a ship register holds a hull under the name you typed but publishes no IMO number for it, the result says so by name — with its flag and MMSI, so you can check it is the right vessel — and offers File this as a non-IMO vessel, which sets the type to 11 and fills the name for you. That is a different answer from "no ship found", and the difference matters: one means check your spelling, the other means your spelling was right and there is no number to find. Two things about when it appears: it is offered only when a register answered that it holds no number — never when a register was unreachable, which would prove nothing about the ship — and when the same name also belongs to a hull that does have an IMO number, the numbered ship is shown and the unnumbered one is not. Pick from what is shown; if none of it is your vessel, enter the details by hand.

Changed your mind, or found the number after all? Under the filled-in vessel there is Not this ship, or it does have an IMO number — search again, which clears both the name and the type together and brings the search back. Do not type an IMO number over the name and leave the type on 11: the check will refuse it as a contradiction, because seven digits whose check digit holds are an IMO number, not a name.

The VCN for a non-IMO vessel is typed, not looked up. Customs' voyage enquiry is keyed by IMO number, so for a vessel without one the platform cannot fetch its calls. Take the conveyance reference from the port's arrival notice or from the carrier, and enter it in the voyage details yourself. A blank there after choosing a non-IMO vessel is expected, not an error — and because there is no hull to ask customs about, nothing about that call is ever checked, badged or emailed either.

Two cautions worth keeping:

A blank is not always proof there is no IMO. Some flag administrations simply do not publish the number to the registers consulted here — China publishes a CN… string, Singapore its own six-digit registry number. So if your bill of lading or the carrier's booking confirmation shows an IMO number, that always wins: type it in and file as 10.Do not invent one. A made-up or borrowed IMO number is worse than 11 with a name. Customs will reject a filing that names the wrong hull, and 11 exists precisely so you never have to guess.

What is the MMSI shown next to a ship?

A radio identity, not a customs one. The MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) is the nine-digit number a ship broadcasts over AIS and uses for its radio licence; ship registers index hulls by it, which is why it is shown beside a vessel found in one. It is useful for checking that the ship named is the ship you mean — search it on any vessel-tracking site and the same hull should come up — but it goes nowhere on a filing. Customs identifies a vessel by its IMO number (type 10) or, when it has none, by name (type 11).

My CSN was refused with error 016 "Invalid Transport Means No/IMO Code" — what do I change?

016 comes back on a CSN (import or export) when customs cannot accept the ship's identity in the vessel field. Two causes have been seen:

A second number beside the IMO. Ship-tracking sites print a ship as a pair, "IMO / MMSI 9876543 / 123456789" (invented numbers), and copying the pair puts the nine-digit MMSI in with the IMO. Keep only the seven-digit IMO number — the one whose last digit is its check digit — under transport means type 10. SCMTR.io stops a value that is not a valid IMO before you sign, and names the IMO to keep.Nothing wrong in the file. On 28 September 2026 an export carrying the right IMO alone — the IMO customs itself lists for the VCN — was refused 016, and the same filing, unchanged in everything customs' record shows, was accepted seven hours later. If your IMO is right and customs lists your VCN for it, send the filing again after a while; if it is refused again, ask the shipping line whether the call is open for export filing yet.

To tell which one you have:

Check the IMO is the ship this VCN was issued for: find the ship in the filing's ship finder (or VCN search) and pick its call, which fills the IMO and the VCN together from customs' own list. Drop the ACK with your CSN on SCMTR.io and it says which of the two causes your file shows.If the ship has no IMO number, file it as type 11 with its name, as described above.

I have the VCN. Can I get the IMO number from it?

Sometimes, and it is worth trying — paste the VCN into the same box you would type a ship's name into, in a filing or on the VCN search page.

The two identify different things. A VCN (Vessel Call Number, the cnvnceRefNmbr on your filing) identifies one call of one ship at one port — NSA12026000001. An IMO number identifies the hull permanently. Neither can be derived from the other by rule.

Customs publishes the mapping in one direction only: its public enquiry answers "which calls does this ship have?" when you give it an IMO, and refuses to answer "whose call is this?" So a VCN resolves here only if this app has already fetched that ship's voyages — because someone looked the ship up by name or IMO, which stores its calls, this one included. That covers the common case of a vessel your organisation has filed against before, and nothing beyond it.

If the VCN comes back with nothing, that is not a statement that your VCN is wrong. It means no one here has looked that ship up yet. Search for the ship by name instead, and its voyages — including this one — come back with it.

Where do I get the VCN, and is the one I picked still right?

Both of those have a page of their own. A name and an IMO number identify the hull; the VCN identifies one call of that hull at one port, and it has a life of its own — asked for by the line, issued by the port days rather than months before the arrival, replaced when the carrier substitutes the ship. The whole of it, in order, is The vessel call number (VCN), start to finish.

When does a VCN exist at all?

Once the port has issued it for that one call, at the shipping line's request — days ahead of the arrival rather than months, so a filing prepared early can be prepared before its VCN exists. A search that finds the ship but no call at your port is usually seeing exactly that, not the wrong hull. The evidence for the timing, and what to do while you wait, are under When does a VCN exist at all?.

You do not have to stop there. With the ship chosen and no VCN on the filing, the guided steps offer "The port has not issued a VCN for this call yet — continue without it". Tick it and Continue saves the draft and moves on, so the rest of the filing can be prepared. The VCN is still required: review lists it as outstanding and the filing cannot be sent until it is entered. For a ship with an IMO number you are emailed when customs lists a call for it at your port.

I prepared the filing early. Is the VCN it picked still the right one?

The platform asks customs at the moments you are already looking and tells you what it found; it keeps reading customs' list for the ships on your open filings when nobody is on the page, and writes to you if the call you picked drops off it. It never changes the number for you and it never files anything. What is checked and when, what the answer does and does not prove, what is actually sent to customs, and what to do when you are told, are all on The vessel call number (VCN), start to finish.

It found the IMO but has no name for it — can I help?

Yes, and it is worth ten seconds.

When you enter an IMO the platform has no name for, it asks whether the name you typed belongs to that hull. Confirming it stores the name against that hull, and from then on the ship is findable by name for everyone searching here — a ship's identity is public information and is not kept per organisation. Nothing about your consignment travels with it: what is shared is the hull's name and its IMO number, never a bill, a party or a filing.

This is the main reason vessel search gets better with use rather than staying wherever it started. Ships you file for repeatedly become the ones it knows best.

Will it fill in the vessel for me?

It fills in what customs itself has confirmed, and asks about the rest.

A name you typed is never turned into a vessel identity on its own — that is the mistake this whole page exists to prevent. Choosing a hull from the search results is a decision you make, and the platform records what you chose rather than guessing between two ships with one name.

Does a correction I make stick?

Yes. A name you confirm outranks anything learned automatically, and later automatic updates will not overwrite it. If you correct a vessel name, that correction stands.

Is vessel search ever required to file?

No. Every vessel field can be typed by hand, and a filing made that way is exactly as valid. The search exists to save you looking up a number and to stop the wrong hull reaching customs — if it is unavailable or unhelpful on a given day, filing is unaffected.