Registration procedures
If a ship is to trade freely into the major ports of the world without encountering
overwhelming difficulties with the authorities, it must have a nationality to identify
it for legal and commercial purposes. That nationality is obtained by registering
the ship. The way registration works varies from one country to another, but the
British regime may be taken as an illustration.
Under the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, British ships must be registered within
Her Majesty’s dominions (in practice, because of the constraints presented by the
legislation of UK Dependent Territories, that registration may have to be in the
UK). A peculiarity of British registration is that the ship is divided into sixty-four
shares. For the purposes of registration, thirty-three of these shares must be owned
by a British subject or by a company established under the law of some part of Her
Majesty’s dominions and having its principal place of business in those dominions.9
Because, under the UK Companies Acts, any person of any nationality may register
and own a company in the United Kingdom, it follows that a national of any
country may own a British ship.
Interestingly, there are no legal penalties for failing to register a ship in this
way, possibly because it was felt that the practical penalties are such that no legal
enforcement is required to provide an additional inducement. A ship thus registered