Seagoing ships emit exhaust gases and particles into the marine boundary layer and significantly contribute to the total budget of anthropogenic emissions. We present an emission inventory for international shipping for the past five decades to be used in global modeling studies with detailed tropospheric chemistry. The inventory is a bottom-up analysis using fuel consumption and fleet numbers for the total civilian and military fleet including auxiliary engines at the end of 2001. Trend estimates for fuel mass, CO2, NOx, and other emissions for the time between 1950 and 2001 have been calculated using ship number statistics and average engine statistics. Our estimate for total fuel consumption and global emissions for the year 2001 is similar to previous activity-based studies. However, compared to earlier studies, a detailed speciation of nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHCs) and particulate matter is given, and carbon monoxide emissions are calculated explicitly. Our results suggest a fuel consumption of approximately 280 million metric tons (Mt) for the year 2001 and 64.5 Mt in 1950. This corresponds to 187 (5.4) Tg CO2 (NOx) in 1950, and 813 (21.4) Tg CO2 (NOx) in 2001. From 1970 to 2001 the world-merchant fleet increased rapidly in terms of ship numbers, with a corresponding increase in total fuel consumption. The fuel consumption estimates are compared against historical marine bunker fuel statistics, and our emission estimates are related to emission budgets of other transport modes. Global ship emissions are distributed geographically according to global vessel traffic densities of the AMVER (Automated Mutual-assistance Vessel Rescue system) data set for the year 2000. This work also sets the basis to develop future emission scenarios based on average-fleet emission indices in part 2 of this study.