Terms of Use

The service

Shipdeck shows ship positions, port information, tide predictions and related maritime data, with an optional AI assistant called Fathom. Vessel data comes from licensed official maritime data providers, public sources and on-device computation.

Not for navigation

Shipdeck is for information and entertainment only. It is not a navigation system, not a navigational aid, and not a safety device.

Never use Shipdeck for navigation, passage planning, collision avoidance, anchoring or berthing decisions, search and rescue, or any other decision affecting safety of life or property at sea. Always navigate using official charts, official tide tables and properly certified equipment, and keep a proper lookout by sight and hearing as the collision regulations require.

In an emergency, call the coastguard on VHF channel 16, send a DSC distress alert on channel 70, or call the emergency number for where you are. Never rely on Shipdeck to find a vessel in distress or to judge whether one is in danger.

How accurate the data is

Assume that everything Shipdeck shows you is approximate, incomplete or out of date until you have confirmed it another way.

AIS is self-reported and nobody verifies it. Every AIS message is broadcast by the vessel herself, from equipment she owns and maintains. We receive that broadcast, we do not check it, and we cannot correct it.

Much of it is typed in by hand. Destination, estimated time of arrival, draught, cargo type, navigational status, and sometimes a vessel's own name and dimensions, are entered manually by her crew. These fields are routinely wrong, left at a default, or never updated after a voyage changes. Treat them as a hint, never as fact.

Not every vessel appears. AIS is not carried by every craft. Small boats, many fishing and leisure vessels, and naval and law enforcement vessels may carry nothing, may carry a receive-only set, or may switch off lawfully. Empty water on the map does not mean empty water.

Positions arrive late, and sometimes never. Coastal receivers only hear a vessel within range of the shore. Satellites hear a patch of ocean only when one passes over it. Messages can be delayed, arrive out of order, or be lost entirely. A position may be minutes old inshore and many hours old offshore. Where we can, we show you how old a position is. Believe that age.

Equipment fails. Transponders break, lose their satellite fix, are wired to the wrong aerial, or are configured with the wrong identity. A vessel can appear in the wrong place, under the wrong name, or as two vessels at once.

Port call history may be inferred from vessel movement data and can be incomplete or wrong; it is provided for information only.

Everything else is an estimate too. Tide predictions are astronomical computations only and take no account of weather, pressure or surge. Weather is a forecast. Fathom's answers are AI generated and may be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date; a notice in the app says so wherever Fathom appears.

Subscriptions

• Pro and Captain are auto-renewing subscriptions, monthly or yearly, billed through the store you bought them from.
• On iPhone and iPad they are billed through your Apple account and cancelled in App Store settings. On Android they are billed through your Google Play account and cancelled in Google Play subscription settings.
• Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the period.
• Pro and Captain may start with a 7 day free trial for new subscribers. After the trial the subscription renews at the shown price unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the trial ends.
• Prices are shown in the app before purchase. Refunds are handled by Apple or by Google Play, not by us.

Adverts

• The free tiers show adverts. Pro and Captain remove them entirely, and that is part of what a subscription buys.
• Adverts are never personalised and we do not track you. See the Privacy Policy for what that means in practice.
• Signed out, you may choose to watch a video advert to open one ship's page for 24 hours. Watching is always optional and declining costs you nothing you already had.
• An unlock earned that way covers one vessel, on this device, for that period. It is not a purchase, it cannot be transferred or refunded, and it ends when the period does.
• We may change which adverts appear, where they appear, or remove them, at any time.

Fair use

Free and paid tiers include usage allowances (searches, AI messages and similar). We may throttle or decline requests that exceed allowances or that appear automated or abusive. Fathom has daily and monthly allowances designed for personal use.

Acceptable use

Do not scrape, redistribute or resell Shipdeck data; do not probe, overload or attack the service; do not use Shipdeck for unlawful surveillance or to endanger any person or vessel.

Accounts

You are responsible for activity under your account. You may delete your account at any time in Settings, or from the account deletion page on our website.

Intellectual property

Shipdeck, its design, illustrations and content are owned by Maritime Master Limited or its licensors. You get a personal, non-transferable licence to use the app.

Disclaimers and liability

Shipdeck is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, timeliness, availability and fitness for a particular purpose.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for:

• any decision you take in reliance on Shipdeck, or any decision you fail to take;
• indirect, consequential, special or incidental loss;
• loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, anticipated savings, goodwill or data;
• loss or damage arising from data that was late, missing, incomplete or wrong, whatever the cause.

Cap on our liability. Where we are liable to you despite the above, our total liability for all claims arising in any twelve month period is limited to the greater of the total amount you paid for Shipdeck in that period, or £100.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded.

If you are a consumer. Nothing in these terms affects the statutory rights you hold as a consumer under the law of the country you live in. In the United Kingdom those include your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to digital content that is of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. Consumers elsewhere keep the equivalent rights their own law gives them. Those rights sit alongside these terms and are not reduced by them.

Changes and termination

We may update the app and these terms. Where a change materially affects your rights or the safety notices above, we will ask you to read and accept the new terms in the app before you carry on using it. For any other change, continued use means acceptance. We may suspend accounts that break these terms.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales.

Contact

Maritime Master Limited. Email: hello@themaritimemaster.com