The United States Vessel Enrolments for the Great Lakes region are part of the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington. RG 41 Records of the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, Certificates of Enrolment and Registry

The transcriptions are from a project that involved an attempt to transcribe all Steamboat enrolments for Great Lakes ports prior to 1861. At the same time thanks to Bill McNeil and Jack Messmer, all vessels for Detroit and Cleveland up to 1861, and Buffalo up to 1841 were included in the file. Thanks are also owed to John Grozelle for assistance in the xBase programming for the data collection and to Jon and Sue Cornwell for the long term loan of the portable computer used for this project.

There are undoubtedly errors in transcription. Some of this was done over a highly compressed period of research at the Historical Collections of the Great Lakes (formerly the Institute for Great Lakes Research at Bowling Green State University) using what is probably the most heavily used set of microfilm of these registers.

The set includes 5741 enrolments in which just under 2000 individual vessels are named, over 6000 people were identified in excess of 21,000 times.