All very well, but a boatscrapping service is definitely not for free, unlike scrapping a car. I have an 11ft grp dinghy in the garden which was damaged some years ago in a storm. I was quoted £350 for scrapping it. Anyone want a garden planter?
And a car can be scrapped at hundreds of places across the country using simple breakdown / hiab vehicles. Scrapping a non seaworthy boat will take cranes, low loaders and possibly a long drive to take it one of a few potential sites. Even if the boat can then be scrapped and sufficient cash raised to cover the grinding up of the low value GRP then it won't cover the costs for shipping a 30 foot wreck a couple of hundred miles
The other part is that whilst companies such as Boat Breakers may have a reasonable and scalable model to scrap boats, it relies on responsible owners to pay them to scrap a boat. Looking at their calculator - to scrap a 3 tonne GRP boat ( i.e. something like a centaur) it will cost £660 + transport costs + crane costs. Maybe £2k. From that they will subtract the value of any working engine or electronics etc that they might be able to sell. Now a responsible owner might just sign the whole boat away and walk away. An irresponsible owner might remove the engine and electronics, mast, sails etc, sell them, for £1000, remove any distinguishing marks from the boat and abandon it, claiming he sold it to some bloke in the pub for £500 and he's no longer responsible for it.
But then you have the legal tangle of determining ownership. It's relatively clear for a boat in a yard with unpaid fees (but even that requires a legal process before the yard acquires rights over the boat), but what about a boat abandoned up a creek somewhere? While many such are "harbours" with associated fees, many are not. And perhaps part of the problem is that abandoning a boat in an unused spot is a very ancient practice; most of the ancient vessels we have evidence of were either abandoned (e.g. the Ferriby boats, Great Harry, Beagle etc.) sunk (Mary Rose, Skuldelev ships) or buried (Sutton Hoo).
very true. That may actually require an act of parliament I suppose to simplify the matter in the same way that wrecked cars get a " Police Aware" sticker on them and are then removed and scrapped . The great difference between those noteworthy vessels you mention and the 50 year old abandoned Centaur though is that the wooden ship would eventually break up and rot. The GRRP boat will still be there, just more derelict in 50 years time. We either allow abandoned boats to proliferate in quiet unmanaged creeks or we empower "someone" to remove them and fund it from either general taxation or from boaters.
One can see this getting worse. Once it becomes known that clubs / harbour authorities etc will be chasing this then you can see marine versions of fly tippers setting up, posing as reputable organisations like Boat Breakers buying these "wrecks" for £10 saying they will dispose of and remove the worry from the next of kin but instead removing anything of any value and flogging it and just abandoning the hull.
I really don't like the idea but, sadly, I fear you may be right. All responsible owners are already registered anyway. SSR to get a MMSI for your radio licence, so it's only a small step.
Spot on
You don't even get a piece of paper now.
And neither SSR nor MMSI indicate ownership.
That's legal weaselling to avoid responsibility if they get it wrong - just like my car registration says it isn't proof of ownership, though AIUI, there's no legal requirement to inform SSR if you sell your boat.
Well, MMSI (or rather, the Ship Station License which gives the MMSI) is merely a license to operate a transmitter aboard a specific vessel. Its nature and limits are specified by the ITU, an international body, and changing it to include anything to do with ownership of the vessel isn't going to happen. UK ship registry CAN provide strong evidence of ownership - but only by Part 1 registration. Part 1 registration is more akin to the vehicle licensing system than the SSR (Part 3) registration that most small-craft use. And very few of the boats that are abandoned will be registered on the SSR; it's really only important for those who consider cruising abroad. The SSR is specifically NOT a register of ownership; it merely fulfills a minimum international requirement for UK craft overseas to be able to prove they are UK vessels. Given the number of people who complain about the renewal fee for the SSR, I don't think you're going to get people interested in a registration scheme like Part 1, and given that Part 1 exists, I don't think Parliament is likely to find precious time to enact the legislation that would be required to make such registration compulsory.