Flags of convenience and the burden of naval protection

How do flags of convenience affect naval protection of merchant shipping?

Flags of convenience reduce costs but may leave protection dependent on larger navies; judging national shipping interests only by the flag register can miss British-owned interests.

Flags of convenience offer cheaper registration, but the states providing them may have little ability to protect the ships. Their commercial usefulness depends partly on larger naval powers continuing to support the international maritime order. A government counting only ships on its own register could understate its country's shipping interests. The historical comparison raises the practical difficulty of separating ownership, registration and flag when deciding whether Britain should intervene. The answer raises that protection problem without setting out a completed reform of the registration system.