Lost at Sea

This meta uses 7 feeder answers, including the meta answer to the previous subround.

Each of the given years is a year of a US Navy ship launch or reclassification (indicated by l. or r.). Each answer is associated with a US Navy ship name for one of these years. (1st and 2nd is used once to chronologically disambiguate between two ships reclassified in the same year.)

Given the aspect of a ship that changes during reclassification is the hull number, the hull number should be important. The letters corresponding to the class match the lengths of the symbols next to the years. These symbols represent international maritime flags, which use 5 of the colors on the color wheel (excluding gray). The different shapes for the A and B in ARB-5 is strong evidence that this is the right direction.

The dots on the flags indicate a color corresponding to a direction on the compass. By taking steps in the indicated directions, each ship has a corresponding path. The ships can be matched uniquely such that each ship's path ends on another ship.

The other part of the hull numbers are the digits at the end. Indexing the digits into the original answers gives FELLOWSHIP.

Year	Action	Answer	Ship	Classification	Flags	Colors	Next Ship	Next Hull No.	Letters
1941	reclassified	FAVORITE PIN	USS Favorite	IX-45		Y W	HAMILTON	18	FE
1941	reclassified	HAMILTON	USS Hamilton	DMS-18		Y B B	TRANSAMERICA PYRAMID	5	L
1943	launch	GOLD TOUCH	USS Midas	ARB-5		W Y R	UNDERWOOD	36	LO
1982	launch	UNDERWOOD	USS Underwood	FFG-36		W W Y	EYE OF PROVIDENCE	6	W
1889	launch	TRANSAMERICA PYRAMID	USS San Francisco	C-5		R	GOLD TOUCH	5	S
2013	launch	OLD HICKORY	USS Jackson	LCS-6		K R W	FAVORITE PIN	45	HI
1975	reclassified	EYE OF PROVIDENCE	USS Providence	CG-6		B B	OLD HICKORY	6	P