Could you elaborate a bit on this part? Intentional sinking for insurance purposes, or to avoid having to pay for it to be scrapped?
I recall there’s some ship graveyards on the Turkish coast where they intentionally ram large cruise-liners into shore so they can scrap em. But I guess that’s more relevant for bigger ships with more steel etc?
Sorry for late reply. Yeah, I was thinking of the latter, though both might be possible. Contriving a marine accident, collision, fire. loss in a storm etc would be physically dangerous and legally very risky. A less serious but still illegal caper would be dodging the scrapage costs by holing it. But when a registered vessel "disappears" that can trigger serious investigations for all sorts of reasons I am sure you can imagine.
Usually this is dealt with through finding a company that can claim to use the ship for something but actually scraps it.
One now defunct company almost failed this kind of dance by admitting it sold a ship for scrapping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Fennia
Because the disposal costs are so high, and recycling of specialist equipment and wiring so complex the point at which a vessel turns from an asset to a liability may be hard to anticipate.
There are lots of "luxury" yachts and "Gin palaces" out there that seem to be worth millions on paper, but are worth net zero. Many have embedded trackers deep in fibreglass mouldings, and large vessels are satellite tracked so simply scuppering them is no longer an option.
During the pandemic there was lots of talk of mooring many cruise ships along the south coast and turning them into permanent hotels. Ships often end up as nightclubs or restaurants.