Reserved cargoes and the like

[Penta]

I'm unsure whether this is possible, but.

Running a first-world flagged ship is expensive. Thus why lots of ships are registered in Liberia or Panama (or even Mongolia ), when they may never see their notionally-flagged country.

One of the ways the rich countries have to beat this (and slow the total collapse of their merchant fleets) is reserving contracts for their own ships (or those of allied countries, especially within NATO). This can be anything: aid shipments, military cargoes, you name it. Often, these contracts are awarded at above-market rates. The US also bans foreign-flag ships from carrying cargoes between US ports.

Similarly, it'd be neat to have the potential of government requisition (not solely a feature of WW2; the QE2 was requisitioned as a troop ship, I recall, during the Falklands War), which basically has you running the ship in question under government orders - again, at a premium!

As a compensation: the government will often pay for part of the cost of new vessels, especially those with special features required for government use.