‘Shipping’ is a generic term that covers the companies involved in marine transport, which could be people or cargos. Most of the publicly-traded shippers are flagged in Greece, and they tend to pay a fat div. Like the domestic shippers, such as UPS or FDX, their merits as a potential investment (or trade) is tied to the broader economy, which right now is in shambles and chaos due to ideologues wanting to re-attack Iran on behalf of a neighboring state, even though the June attempt didn’t go well.
The diff between ‘boats’ and ‘ships’ is a bit more problematic. Some really big things, like subs, are called ‘boats’. Some smaller things, like corvettes, are called ‘ships’. But if you can claim a working knowledge of the commercially-sized things that float on the waters of the world, for having made a career of overhauling marine machinery or have built a few boats yourself, such as for fly-fishing protected water, I’d say you’ve earned the right to called either what you will, especially since it annoys to no end people who insist that certain things have to be called ‘ships’ --and not merely ‘boats’-- even though they’ve likely never walked a floating chunk of steel a fifth of mile long from the pointy end to its fan tail nor packed a tool box on their shoulder up and down ladders from bridge to bilge and couldn’t point to a SSTG or CPTG even if they were standing next one.
Like many of the older generation, there are sailors in my family. Pre-WW 2, my Dad sailed the North Atlantic and later was involved in anti-sub patrols. He loved the cold and frozen north and told stores of Sundays taking the captain’s gig and rowing over to an ice burg for a game of baseball and to collect fresh water. His brother was part of the Pacific Fleet and happened to be on watch when Pearl was bombed and later was on station for the Bikini tests. Though not sailor herself, my daughter helped the icebreaker, Polar Star, tie up and unload supplies for McMurdo the year she spent in Antarctica, which is a ship whose engine mounts I helped replace one dry-docking period.
So, ships and boats are familiar things to me. Investing in them, not so much, and whether I run a serious investing campaign will depend on what opportunities arise.