I Introduction

The subject of this chapter concerns a novel, indeed rather revolutionary, conception, commonly called an “unmanned ship”. This idea is apt to change very drastically, and to a large extent distort, our established ideas about the meaning of the word “ship”. So disruptive is the concept of the “unmanned ship”, indeed, that it still has no generally accepted name, alternative titles including “autonomous ship”, “self-steering ship” or “unmanned maritime vehicles”. And this is quite apart from certain doubts as to whether in law it can be considered as a ship or not.2