The data describes the world's merchant fleet between January 1, 2008 and January 1, 2017, with a breakdown by type. Of the around 52,000 merchant ships trading internationally, some 11,000 ships were bulk carriers.
The global merchant fleet
How many ships are there in the world? The number of ships in the world exceeds 50,000: As of January 2017, there were 52,183 ships in the world's merchant fleets. General cargo ships are ranked as the most common type of ship in the global merchant fleet, accounting for about a third of the fleet: There were almost 17,000 such ships in the merchant fleet as of the beginning of 2017.
