Some of these seem extremely random... I presume there's some kind of logic that I'm missing? Do countries register ships with other countries for tax reasons or something?
Tax havens, baby!!!! The very rich register ships in countries across the globe that they'll never ship to or from so they don't pay or pay fewer taxes to the countries they do ship to and it's perfectly legal! Tax evasion is illegal except when you're rich.
Except for some (usually very low) registration fees, ships themselves are generally not taxed. The flag has no bearing on the taxation of shipped goods. There are many reasons behind the choice of a flag, including crew costs, maintenance costs, safety requirements, access to market (cabotage in the US is generally limited to American ships), access to funds, crew nationality requirements, the applicable regulatory framework, etc. Makes perfect sense for ship owners to optimize all these factors. It is also completely unworkable to appoint a flag. What would the criteria even be?
The purpose is to reduce costs by enabling companies legally to extract more work, for as little pay as possible, from workers drawn from anywhere in the world. When a limiting regulation is uncovered or appealed to – such as Panama’s labour law guaranteeing no more than a six-day work week – lobbying by the shipping company (in this case, cruise lines) is likely to earn an exemption - important since workers often work months-long shifts without days off.
Anyone who's been to a large enough harbour is also likely to have seen some of these. I live in a country with some of the laxest taxation and regulations (Greece), yet I've seen most of the weird ones on the list, on anything from yachts to container ships.
This happens way too often to me. Not this time with Panama, but sometimes I just decide to quit trying after a portion of a group of countries doesn't work, usually the ones I didn't bother to try are right answers.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig was flagged by the Marshalls. But not because BP is anywhere near the Marshalls - they sell their flag so companies like BP have fewer regulatory hoops to jump through. Also, the Marshalls get about half of their Flag of Convenience revenue from oil rigs (not ships) and the country is threatened by sea level rise, so figure that one out. Oh, and the Marshalls doesn't actually get much money from selling their flag because the government sold the operation to a private company based in Virginia in the 1990s. So, yeah, flags of convenience.
The merchant navy was pioneering globalisation centuries before almost anyone else, and the multicultural aspect of working at sea remains strong. However, the simplest (and therefore commonest) reason for “flagging out” is money. P&O Ferries were the largest British ferry operator running across the English Channel (from the UK to France) when they suddenly decided that they were in fact a Cypriot company, and therefore exempt from both British and French minimum wage laws. Bingo. The third world crews now operating these ships are poorly trained, and work excessively long contracts, further jeopardising public safety in the name of profit. Of course, all this requires the complicity of national governments. The UK flag has been degraded by successive British governments, to the point that there is no longer any requirement for British seafarers to work on a British flagged ship - not even the Master!
This explains the huge number of ships with Monrovia or Majuro painted on the stern
This explains the huge number of ships with Monrovia or Majuro painted on the stern