![The UK shipping fleet contracted to its lowest level in 2014 since 2006](https://iims-media-library.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/12154740/flat1.jpg)
Shipping is a complex international business and many different parties, often based in different countries, may have a commercial interest in a single vessel.
The chart in the full document illustrates four of many ways that the UK shipping fleet might be presented, in each case looking at the deadweight tonnage (dwt – a measure of cargo carrying capacity) of the vessels concerned.
By all four measures – registered, direct owned, parent owned and managed – the UK shipping fleet experienced substantial growth between the late 1990s and 2008/09, when the industry started to feel the impact of the global recession.