Navy Deck Logs — How to Get Yours Free
Navy deck logs from January 1962 to May 1975 were scanned by the VA and are free to search at the National Archives. The catalog link, the exact search format, and what a deck log can and cannot prove.
What a deck log is
A deck log is the ship’s official daily record. The officer of the deck wrote down where the ship was, what she was doing, the weather, who had the watch, and anything that happened — hour by hour, every day she was in commission.
For a veteran, that matters because it is a contemporaneous government record of where your ship was on a given date. Not a recollection written down fifty years later. The log itself, in the handwriting of the man who kept it.
What a deck log can and cannot show
This is where most people are sent in the wrong direction, so it is worth being plain about it.
A deck log records the ship — not the crew. It will show you the ship’s position, her movements, her port calls, casualties, drills, and significant events. It does not list every man aboard, and it will usually not have your name in it unless you were on watch, were injured, went to captain’s mast, or were otherwise written into the day’s entries.
Muster rolls record the crew. If what you need is proof that you were aboard, the muster roll and your service record are the documents that carry your name. The National Archives holds those separately.
In practice the two work together. The muster roll puts you aboard. The deck log says where the ship was and what was happening while you were there.
The free route — National Archives Catalog
In 2019 the Department of Veterans Affairs began scanning Navy deck logs from the Vietnam era. That scanning project covered nearly every ship that served between January 1962 and May 1975, and the results are in the National Archives Catalog, free, in the public domain, available to anyone with an internet connection.
Start here: National Archives Catalog — Navy Deck Logs
How to search
Enter the ship in this format:
NAME (space) HULL TYPE (dash) HULL NUMBER
- Do not put “USS” in front of the name
- Capitals do not matter
- Without quotation marks you get a broader set of records containing your terms
- With quotation marks you get the specific item
Worked example — looking for the April 1969 log of USS Energy (MSO-436):
| What you type | What you get |
|---|---|
Energy MSO-436 | every record containing that ship |
Energy MSO-436 April 1969 | records containing that ship and that date |
"Energy MSO-436 April 1969" | that one deck log |
If your ship is not there
Two possibilities. Either it has not been uploaded yet — the Archives are still adding files and the collection changes week to week — or the log could not be located. Deck logs outside the 1962–1975 window exist at the National Archives but were not part of the VA scanning project, so many are not online and have to be requested.
Nobody should be charging you for these
These records are public domain. They were paid for once already, by the people who served. Some organisations charge a fee, or require a paid membership, to hand over documents that are free at the source. You do not need to pay anyone to search the catalogue above, and you do not need to pay us — we do not sell records and never will.
Why we keep this page
We publish documented asbestos-exposure records for Navy ships, shipyards and shore installations. The equipment aboard a steam-driven warship — the boilers, the turbines, the miles of lagged steam piping — was insulated with asbestos-containing material for decades, and the men who worked those spaces breathed it.
If you are trying to establish where you served and what you worked around, the deck log is one of the documents that does it, and it costs nothing. Build the rest of your record with MusterLog, our free tool for assembling every ship, yard and base you served in.
If you have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestos-related lung cancer or asbestosis after service aboard a Navy vessel, O’Brien Law Firm reviews Navy asbestos claims at no charge to you.