Asking a shipping database for the name of a ship and its features is usually a simple and straight forward operation, but occasionally such a question can return that many ships, that a further 'manual' sort job is required.

Take for example the name AURORA. We Brits' have a beautiful liner called Aurora, a P and O ship, with a gross tonnage [volume of inside useable spaces] of 76152 grt = 7,615,200 cubic feet of space.  She has a British 'conventional' radio callsign which is GOLF UNIFORM SIERRA SIERRA [GUSS] and sails under the red ensign, the flag of Great Britain [GB].

Here is that list of the world Aurora's. I'll see you again on the other side of the table below

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The only three columns of interest to you are the SHIPS NAME, CALLSIGN, and SYMBOL, the latter giving the country of flag. Look at the weird and wonderful callsigns.  Without them, how would we know which ship we were talking about. Our country is 'G' [for GB] and a count will reveal 29 Aurora's in the UK alone. The P and O liner Aurora is the second one down the list of the "G's" and  by my reckoning, the 156th in the list overall.

With so much demand on the Radiocommunications Agency [RA], a UK government department, for callsigns, even the big British ships are now having to use what appear to be yachts/small vessel callsigns.

The British ships arriving at Southampton in November 2004 [some more than once] are as follows:

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