One doesn’t grow up in Singapore without realising that we are a major port state, but I had not hitherto thought of us as a seafaring or a shipowning nation, or at least if I did I would have looked only to the past, to the tradewinds of 14th century Malay world, the Bugis, the Sulawesi trade fleets with their sails and their spices, the Chinese vessels from the north (like those depicted on our dollar bills until 1999), the paddling and sinuous weaving of small crafts in and out of archipelagic channels…

I was looking up the structure of the world fleet for my international shipping regulatory law class. If ships were citizens we would be the fifth largest state by population: 6% of the world’s merchant fleet flies a Singapore flag, with 30% of these also being Singapore-owned. They account for more than 5% of the world’s shipping measured in deadweight tonnage. And we own ships too: by beneficial ownership we are the 10th or 11th largest owners of the world’s fleet, moving about 3% of the market share of the world’s tonnage. Nearly 400 of Singapore-owned vessels sail under a foreign flag. To my surprise, we are also the sixth largest contributors to the IMO budget (GBP1.29m; this is higher than even other major shipping nations like Greece (1.08m) and Japan (0.96m.)

Also, a student in my class works for the Tuvalu Ship Registry! (I was under the impression Tuvalu must surely be a flag of convenience, but I was quite wrong: it is not on the ITF blacklist of flags of convenience, and far from being a mere letterbox actually hires 55 employees and is based out of Singapore (ahem) with an Anson Road address. She was very coy, however, when taxed on the cost of registering a ship under a Tuvalu flag (but very willing to tell us Singapore’s — 10cents per gross ton.) Shipping is more curious than I’d supposed.