Spotlight

German merchant fleet

The BSH maintains the German flag register and is the central registration office for all German seagoing vessels. This also includes ships which have been assigned to a charterer for a certain period of time and which fly under a foreign flag for a limited period of time, in so-called bareboat charter (BBC).

For the following statistics kept by the BSH, seagoing ships from German seagoing ship registers with a gross tonnage (GT) of 100 or more are taken into account:

Stock of the German merchant fleet

These statistics (only available in german) show a monthly overview of the German merchant fleet dating back to the corresponding month of the previous year. It is structured according to ship types, which in turn are differentiated into subtypes (such as dry cargo ships or container ships). For each month it contains the number of vessels and their gross tonnage per vessel type and subtype. The total number of vessels flying foreign flags for a limited period of time is shown at the end of the table. The following statistics show which foreign flags these ships fly.

Statistics of ships registered temporarily under a foreign flag (bareboat charter)

These statistics (only available in german) cover the preceding month, broken down by bareboat charter flags. For each foreign flag numbers (red) and GT (blue) are shown in separate graphs and additionally in a  table.  

Detailed stock of the German merchant fleet

These statistics (only available in german) show the number of ships and their gross tonnage per ship type for the previous month. In addition, it shows how many of these ships were registered in the International Shipping Register (ISR) and how many ships temporarily sailed under foreign flags.

Development of flag management

These statistics (only available in german) show the ratio of the number of ships (red) and their gross tonnage (blue) under German and foreign flags for the past year.