Posted By Bob Youel you need to look at marine law and standard H&S law at the same time; as where a ship is at the side of a dock and tied up depending on which side you are working on different laws may apply e.g. if you are on the deck and handing a load to a person who is standing on the dock 2 laws may apply especially so if you are crew and undertaking normal crew duties and the other person is not crew! common law duties still apply It is a practice today to use ships in construction situations [& probably 'gang master' situations] for land based jobs where ships are docked as close to a job as poss to get around some employment, welfare and probably other laws especially taxation - I found out later that a job I worked on used the 'work on the deck' situation [if you undertook the work on the deck you did not pay the same tax!] to get around the need to pay VAT! [this was a number of years ago so things may have changed!]. The work undertaken could just as easily have been undertaken on the dock e.g. small fabrications!