It is ten years since I wrote the third edition of this book in 2002 and much in the shipbuilding world has changed in this period. For a large part of the so-called “noughties”, substantial demand for modern shipping tonnage, fuelled by global economic growth and rocketing freight rates, led to very significant competition for newbuilding slots. In consequence, and for the first time in several decades, the world’s leading shipbuilders could demand significant price increases for their products, develop large long-term order books and even “pick and choose” their customers from among the many shipowners wishing to contract with them. Many countries responded by developing and implementing significant expansion plans for their national shipbuilding industries. In particular, China, whose already huge economy had been growing by 10% or more per annum, generating massive demand for the importation of raw materials and exportation of manufactured goods, embarked upon a shipyard construction programme intended to make it the world’s largest shipbuilder by 2016. This period of shipbuilding prosperity ended, of course, with the economic collapse that followed the global financial crisis beginning in September 2008. Within months, many shipowners who had committed themselves at newbuilding prices that had become hugely overvalued faced the prospect of crippling losses; in extreme cases, and as the shipping banks retreated from the finance marketplace, some owners were unable to secure the funding needed to complete the purchase of their newbuilds, thereby exposing them to the loss of their previously paid instalments of the contract price. The period since 2008 has seen numerous attempts by owners to renegotiate the prices and/or delivery dates of such tonnage, and an enormous increase in the level of “vessel rejection” and cancellation disputes, a phenomenon not previously seen since the very early part of the decade.