Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. The Italian industry started in 1892, and the Japanese industry after the passing of an 1896 law to subsidise native shipbuilding. After suffering damage or disaster, liner operators did not want the name of a broken ship to tarnish the brand of their passenger services. Many Victorian ships made their final voyages with the final letter of their name chipped off. In the 1930s it became cheaper to "beach" a boat by running her ashore—as opposed to using a dry dock. The ship would have to weigh as little as possible and would run ashore at full speed. Dismantling operations required a rise of tide and close proximity to a steel-works. Electric shears, a wrecking ball and oxy-acetylene torches were used. The technique of the time closely resembles that used in developing countries . Thos. W. Ward Ltd., one of the largest breakers in the United Kingdom in the 1930s, would recondition and sell all furniture and machinery. Many historical artifacts were sold at public auctions: the Cunarder , sold as scrap for , received high bids for her fittings worldwide. However, any weapons and military information, even if obsolete, were carefully removed by Navy personnel before turning over the ship for scrapping. In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the cruise ship trade, cruise vessels began to appear more frequently in ship-breaking facilities. Location trends Until the late 20th century the majority of ship-breaking activity took place in the port cities of industrialized countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. those dismantlers that still remain in the United States work primarily on government-surplus vessels. Starting in the mid-20th century, East Asian countries with lower labour costs began to dominate ship-breaking. As labour costs rose, centres of the ship-breaking industry moved—initially from countries such as Japan and Hong Kong, to Korea and Taiwan and then to China. For example, the southern port city of Kaohsiung in Taiwan operated as the world's leading dismantling site in the late 1960s and 1970s, breaking up 220 ships totaling 1.6 million tons in 1972 alone; in 1977 Taiwan continued to dominate the industry with more than half the market share, followed by Spain and Pakistan. At the time, Bangladesh had no capacity at all. However, the sector is volatile and fluctuates wildly, and Taiwan processed just two ships 13 years later as wages across East