Ghost Ships Go Legit: The First Global Rulebook for Crewless Cargo Vessels

Ninety per cent of world trade moves by sea, yet the ships that carry it have been waiting for something surprisingly mundane: a rulebook. That changed this week. On 1 July 2026, the International Maritime Organization's new Code of Safety for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships — the MASS Code, adopted in May by the IMO's Maritime Safety Committee — took effect, giving remote-controlled and crewless cargo vessels their first global framework.

The Code starts life as a voluntary instrument. For at least two years, flag states can apply it experimentally while the IMO drafts a legally binding version, expected around 2030 and reported to become mandatory under the SOLAS convention on 1 January 2032. Voluntary or not, the signal matters: autonomous ships are no longer a regulatory grey zone.

A captain, somewhere

The most interesting choice in the Code is stubbornly human. Every MASS must still have a designated master who carries full legal responsibility for the vessel at all times — whether standing on the bridge or supervising from a Remote Operations Centre ashore. Autonomy, in the IMO's view, redistributes work; it does not dissolve accountability. Remote operators will need training, watchkeeping standards and fallback procedures, just like any crew.

Japan is already sailing

If the rules sound theoretical, the ships are not. In January, the Japanese container vessel GENBU — developed under the Nippon Foundation's MEGURI2040 programme — obtained autonomous-ship certification from ClassNK and began regular commercial service on a coastal route, reported as the world's first automated coastal container vessel carrying general cargo with Level 4-equivalent autonomy. Japan, facing a chronic shortage of mariners, aims to make half of its coastal shipping autonomous by 2040.

Europe's pioneer tells a soberer story. Norway's Yara Birkeland, the 120-TEU electric container ship launched as the world's first autonomous box ship, has spent years in trials between Herøya and Brevik; Yara acknowledges the technology took longer to harden than expected. That is the honest lesson of this transition: the hard part is not making a ship steer itself on a calm day, but proving — to insurers, port authorities and now the IMO — that it fails safely on a bad one.

Crewless ships will not sweep the oceans overnight; the economics favour short, fixed coastal routes first. But as of this month, the ghost ship is no longer an outlaw. It has paperwork.