Open Data

The Wooden Boat Atlas is generated from structured data, and that data is published alongside the pages. If you want to check our work, mirror the atlas, build a different interface over it, or pull a designer's record into your own project, take it.

Files

85api/designers.json — Naval architects and designers
46api/builders.json — Yards, builders and boatwrights
35api/classes.json — Classes, rules and vernacular types
14api/associations.json — Clubs, museums, schools and class bodies
5api/vessels-featured.json — Individual boats with their own entries
7api/regions.json — Regions
7api/eras.json — Eras
37api/archives.json — Repositories and digital resources
364api/glossary.json — Glossary terms — the Maritime Glossary as the atlas carries it
185api/search-index.json — Flattened index of every entry, for search

Everything is UTF-8 JSON, indented for human reading. api/index.json lists the files with record counts and a build timestamp. glossary.json is generated at build time from the Foundation's Maritime Glossary — the source of truth for terms — plus a small file of atlas-specific design vocabulary.

Record shape

Designers, builders, classes, institutions and vessels all share one schema, so a client that can read one can read all five:

{
  "id":       "spaulding-myron",        // stable; also the URL and anchor
  "name":     "Myron Spaulding",
  "sort":     "Spaulding, Myron",
  "sub":      "one-line subtitle",
  "life":     "1905 – 2000",
  "place":    "Sausalito, California",
  "start":    1930,                      // for timeline ordering
  "regions":  ["sf-bay"],
  "eras":     ["between-wars", "postwar"],
  "summary":  "one to three sentences",
  "essay":    ["paragraph", "…"],        // optional, deep entries only
  "facts":    [["Label", "Value"], …],
  "works":    [{"name": "…", "year": "…", "note": "…"}],
  "links":    {"designers": [], "builders": [], "classes": [], "associations": []},
  "flags":    ["unresolved questions, stated plainly"],
  "sources":  [{"t": "title", "u": "url"}]
}

links is one-directional in the data; reverse links are computed at build time. Ids are stable and are treated as permanent — they are the URLs.

Two fields worth understanding

flags is not an error log. It is the record of what is genuinely unresolved: dates two sources disagree about, names that could not be matched, attributions that rest on inference. Any client presenting this data should surface them, because an entry without its caveats is a worse entry.

sources may carry "access": "private", meaning the source was consulted under a subscription or private arrangement and is cited in full but not linked. Nothing from such a source is reproduced in the data.

Terms

Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Use it, change it, build on it — attribute Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation and share your version under the same terms. Cited sources belong to their publishers, and a link is not an endorsement by them.

If you build something with this, we would like to hear about it: corrections@ggwbf.org.

Wooden Boat Atlas v3.0 · built 30 July 2026 · a project of the Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation · licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · open data · corrections