ABSTRACT
Maritime history dates back thousands of years, and one constant throughout this time has been that ships navigating the seas have people aboard. With the recent appearance of unmanned ships on our seascape, however, this certainty has come to an end. This chapter probes the consequences that the turn to unmanned ships entail for the provisions of the UNCLOS, which were crafted based on the assumption that ships carry an on-board crew. Concretely, it enquires into the impact that the absence of people on board may have on the UNCLOS provisions that pertain to maritime crime and comprise a reference to ‘ships’. By disentangling the multi-dimensional notion of ‘ship’ – which is used in the UNCLOS as a reference to moveable property as well as a cipher for flag states and even human beings – the analysis demonstrates that the advent of unmanned ships cannot be accommodated by the convention without further ado. This holds true not only for the substantive provisions of the convention but also, and this is arguably even more significant, for the jurisdictional rules it comprises.
