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A comment on How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry. Parent comment

Re:How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry by Vespasian on Monday November 10, 2025 @02:38AM (#45873429)
Interesting question. Its plausible that there are not many vessels that are UK flagged anymore.

The more interesting question is how many of these are under "control"/influence of domestic operators

If required, a flag can be exchanged in a pinch and tax codes /regulations can be adapted to allow/encourage this.

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Re:How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry by noir_lord on Monday November 10, 2025 @03:11AM (#45873635)
Happened during the Falklands War.

There are peacetime rules and war time rules, war time rules are best summarised as “government does what it wants and justifies it after the fact”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War_order_of_battle:... under “Ships taken from trade”.

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Re:How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry by realityking on Monday November 10, 2025 @04:41AM (#45874251)
I just clicked through to some of the listed ships and it appears they were all flying a British flag in 1982 before being requisitioned.

It’s not at all clear to me a government would have that power about a foreign flagged vessel, even if the shipping line owning it might be British.

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Re:How the UK lost its shipbuilding industry by RobotToaster on Monday November 10, 2025 @05:50AM (#45874641)
Maybe not legally, but most of the countries used as a flag of convenience are tiny, what could the Marshall islands do about it?
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