ABSTRACT
Ship registration in England has its origins in the first of the seventeenth-century Navigation Acts, described in its preamble as "An Act for the Encouraging and Increasing of Shipping and Navigation". By the nineteenth century the Navigation Acts had been repealed and ship registration law was by then embodied in a series of Merchant Shipping Acts, the most significant of which was the Merchant Shipping Act 1894. Since the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 was a major consolidation of the previous Merchant Shipping legislation, it will come as no surprise to the reader that the ship registration provisions contained in Parts I and II of the Act are a restatement of the provisions introduced in 1988 and 1993. When the Registrar has received an application for registration as well as a certificate of survey and satisfied himself that a vessel is eligible to be registered, the yacht owner will be issued with a carving and marking note.
