Why Are All the Ships From Panama? (I Failed to Understand the Brief...) By Andrew Broadley (he/him) If you’ve ever watched the cargo ships coming into the docks (you probably haven’t) you may have noticed one thing they all have in common. Actually, they have quite a few things in common. But one sorta unexpected thing. They’re all from Panama? Panama is home to the largest shipping fleet in the world. Larger than that of China or the United States. But it has little to do with Panama being the powerhouse of the seas, and more the powerhouse of making a little extra cash on the side. The OG side hustle. Like OnlyFans except, OnlyFlags. (That joke will make more sense later.) Cargo ships spend most of their life on the open seas and because the open sea is big and scary it’s pretty important that ships have their current rego and WOF
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(I don’t think that’s what it’s called). Because of this, a ship needs to have a place where it is registered. The place where it’ll get its engine cleaned up and new rims and window tints done. So every country has a ship register where they keep track of all their ships and all the ships need to be in one of these registers. And you would think a ship would be in the registry of the country it operates from or the place where the business is based. You would think wrong. Some countries, such as Panama, don’t really have any requirements to go into their big boat registry. In fact, they have what is called an open registry. You don’t have to be from there, or live there, or have a business there. You can just go online and be like: “hey, I own a boat, can I register it in Panama?”
And they will be like “Yeah no worries, that's cool, just pay us a little cash.” Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of this ship that’s... sorta… from Panama. So Panama doesn’t have a lot of rules about registering your boat in their country, and Panama also doesn’t have a lot of rules about what is and isn’t okay to do with your boat or the people, and stuff, that is on it. And this is a pretty big deal when it comes to ships. Ships spend a lot of time in international waters. And despite what movies and TV tell you, anything doesn’t go in international waters. When in international waters, you obey the laws of the ship's registered country. So while it’s not illegal to commit murder in international waters
