largest british ship

[Jim Brady]

Keith I wonder if UK tax is less than French.?There will be some reason for it and it will be in the French's favour they will not be doing it for our good.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[j.sabourn]

British shipping at one time was represented by the red ensign. I also cannot see the advantages of registering foreign ships under, when in the past it was blamed partially for the demise of the fleets due to the excessive tax burdens. It once again points a finger at the elaborate plans to dispose of British seafarers. At one time a proportion of the crew and master and ch.eng. had to be British citizens on such registered ships. English as still is, was supposed to be the spoken language for communication re distress and general communications. All these laws must have been pushed to one side somewhere along the way. They have achieved what they set out to do which was to get rid of the British seafarer. Whatever ships you see under the red ensign I can only think of as a sop to those who suspect what has gone on in the past 30 to 40 years. JS

[happy daze john in oz]

Most cruise ships are now registered in the Bahamas but there are a few still registered in UK, mainly Southampton. Either a tax dodge or some ulteria motive for this.

[Richard Cotton]

John Prescott said some years ago that he would bring back the Red Ensign, he didn't say that they would be manned by British Seamen though. This is a case in point. UK is just another FOC, no doubt good for big business and so on, but done nothing whatsoever for the British Seafarer. Not that we have many these days I suppose. The skills have left our shores, and to be honest those skills are no longer required in todays modern shipping world. Not even allowed to splice a wire these days.

[Captain Kong]

In the 1950s we had 52% of the whole world`s shipping. Every port you went to there was always a British ship in there.
We had over 150,000 British Seafarers.
Harold Wilson signed the Lima Agreement and some of our ships were transferred to the flag of our ex Colonies and their crews, Nigerian National Line and Black Star Line of Ghana , taking all the trade away from EDs, Palm Line,
Scyndia Navigation Co, of Bombay, took our shipping from us. and so on. our fleets went smaller, then Europe took all our trade and banned us from trading with NZ and Australia, that bankrupted New Zealand as a country, they really suffered from their loss of meat, fruit and Dairy exports to UK, same as Australia,
That was the demise of our MN.
Germany still has a bigger fleet and trade world wide. South America is full of german containers and goods. we import nothing down there in British ships.
The politicians have destroyed everything we fought a war for.
.
. The Three Queens of Cunard have flagged out to Hamilton Bermuda. another big loss to the British register, I do not sale Cunard anymore, that is why I sail Holland America, their ships are still registered in Rotterdam, Dutch flag.
Brian