Merchant vessel

A merchant vessel or trading vessel is a boat or ship that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This excludes pleasure craft that do not carry passengers for hire and warships.

They come in a myriad of sizes and shapes from twenty-foot inflatable dive boats in Hawaii, to 5,000 passenger casino vessels on the Mississippi River, to tugboats plying New York Harbor, to 1,000 foot oil tankers and container ships at major ports, to a passenger carrying submarine in the U.S. Virgin Islands.