Shipping

The Shipping Group of Lennox Paton provides comprehensive and responsive legal advice and service with respect to original ship registration, transfer ship registration, inbound and outbound bareboat registration and provisional ship registration.

We have extensive experience in representing leading financial institutions as special counsel with respect to the financing of shipping groups offering the shares of Bahamian flag vessels as security.

We have an office in London to assist with transactions operating within the Greenwich Mean Time Zone.

The Bahamas Maritime Authority

The Bahamas Maritime Authority ("the Authority") is a semi-autonomous statutory corporation that was formed in 1995 in order to establish an efficient and responsive administrative vehicle for registration of vessels and the enforcement of safety requirements. The Authority has offices in Nassau, London and New York and an agency in Tokyo. The Authority represents The Bahamas at the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The Authority's chief objective is to attract high quality tonnage while concurrently maintaining the highest international standards of safety and operation.

The Bahamas Ship Register

As of the 31st October 2001 The Bahamas has the third largest ship registry in the world with some 1,500 vessels registered exceeding 33 million gross tonnage. Moreover, the Authority has just recently exceeded Japan as the third largest financial contributor to the IMO. The largest percentage of ships on the register are tankers and passenger ships together amounting to approximately 33 per cent of vessels registered.

Ship Registration

Ship registration may be effected in Nassau, London or New York. Vessels of 1,600 net registered tonnage or more and not more than 12 years old at the date of registration may be registered without regard to the nationality of the owner. Vessels more than 12 years old may not be registered without a very detailed initial survey. It is not necessary that a Bahamian company be registered as the owner where the owner is not a Bahamian national. This qualifies The Bahamas Registry as an "open registry". Eight classification societies have been appointed to carry out statutory surveys on behalf of the Authority - they are as follows:-

  • American Bureau of Shipping
  • Bureau Veritas
  • Det Norske Veritas
  • Germanischer Lloyd
  • Korean Register of Shipping
  • Lloyd's Register of Shipping
  • Nippon Kaiji Kyokai
  • Registro Italiano Navale

A vessel transferring its registration will not be required to be re-surveyed if it is in possession of valid safety certificates issued by one of the appointed classification societies.

Initial Registration fee

  1. Ships of 5,000 net tons or less, US$1.00 per ton (minimum of $2,000.00).
  2. Ships of over 5,000 net tons but under 25,001 net tons, US$0.90 per ton.
  3. Ships of 25,001 net tons or over, US$22,500.00.

Annual Fee

  1. 1. Ships of 2,000 net tons or less, US$1,900.00.
  2. Ships of over 2,000 net tons but under 5,001 net tons, US$1,650.00 plus US$0.13 per ton.
  3. Ships of over 5,000 net tons, US$1,650.00 plus US$0.12 per ton.

Taxation

Foreign shipping groups that take ownership of a vessel through a Bahamian corporation will not pay any corporate income or dividend taxes or capital gains tax on the sale of the vessel or shares of the holding company of the vessel under the laws of The Bahamas.