North American Maritime Ministry Association

The coordination efforts out of which NAMMA emerged began in the 1890s–1930s, but seafarers' welfare charities were already established in the United States and Canada in the mid-19th century.

Joseph Tuckermann, and the Catholic Bishop Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus, but was disbanded shortly after its founding in 1812 when the United States went to war with Britain.

[1] In 1910, a tentative list of Catholic seafarers' centers worldwide was compiled under Pius X, mentioning Baltimore, Boston, Montreal, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia.

[1] The international organization for Catholic seafarers' ministry, Stella Maris (then the Apostleship of the Sea) was founded in 1922, spurred in large part by the advocacy of the Scottish writer Peter Anson.

In 1899, the Boston Seamen's Friend Society invited representatives of all Christian ministries to seafarers, including naval chaplains, to a 'Conference of Sailors' Workers' on October 25–27 of that year.

The Conference seems to have fallen in line with hundreds of other groups who would like to see the Government extend its activities into fields not originally contemplated-fields which logically are local and "within the care of the people.

[8] Having formally begun as the 'National Group of Seamen's Agencies' (NGSA) in 1932, the organization changed its name a number of times to reflect different emphases in purpose and geography.

[12] Through its connections with ICMA and the Center for Mariner Advocacy of the Seamen's Church Institute, it has also been involved as an observer in negotiations surrounding the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006.

NAMMA is credited with building personal and institutional relationships between seafarers' welfare organizations, which tend in North America to be geographically and theologically distant from each other.

The conferences’ content centers around comparing approaches and issues in seafarers’ welfare, with regular guest speakers from the US Coast Guard, various chambers of shipping, and the International Transport Workers' Federation.

In its capacity as a professional association, NAMMA has acted as a collective spokesgroup for Christian seafarers' welfare organizations to provide information on their work to the industry and general public,[14][15] as well as researchers and governments.