Spectral fatigue damage calculations has been performed on four ships in order to assess the effect that the probabilistic modeling of sea states has on the estimated fatigue life. The damage estimation method is based on the Miner- Palmgren fatigue damage formulation and a spectral approach is used to determine the necessary variances of the stress processes. Both the horizontal and vertical hull girder bending induced stress process together with the local water pressure induced stress process is taken into account. The wave scatter diagrams are applied in the calculations and their fatigue severity is assessed by analyzing the results obtained with the ten scatter diagrams and the four ships. All four ships are analyzed both in full load and ballast conditions and while traveling at both full and reduced speed. It is found that the fatigue severity of a wave scatter diagram is dependent on several parameters, some of these being the extreme wave hight extrapolated from the scatter diagram and the mean zero up-crossing period in conjunction with the ship length . Based on these three parameters and expression is derived in order to calculate one single number describing the fatigue severity of a scatter diagram with respect to a certain ship.