Numerous structural end connections are utilized everyday in the marine industry for ship design and/or maintenance. End connection design has been developed in earlier vessel designs and adapted as a general standard for all vessels being designed / built at a facility. Usually the supporting calculations developed to analyze the structural end connection are not available for engineers to re-examine. Furthermore, young engineers employ un-proven end connections in their designs, using the justification “It has been done like this in the past, it should work.” In this thesis, the author concentrates on finite element analysis for thirteen typical end connections used in the marine industry and correlated the shear and moment transfer to an AISC developed empirical beam equation for comparison. The author will rely on first principle equations and finite element analysis to prove the efficiency of various end connections, and draw comparative conclusions per each end connection analyzed.