The maritime space of ships is more often developed as a metaphor than critically investigated. Abstract fantasies of global flows and fluid motions ignore the material histories of ships, which often involve the capture of individuals and populations within networks of legal and extra-legal power. Standing as an exception to the bounded geographies of nation-states, ocean space lies beyond any single sovereign’s power; the passengers of ships are subject to multiple forms of biopower, wielded by diverse actors. I examine three ship-spaces—British slave ships, the migrant ship Komagata Maru, and Disney’s cruise ships—to tease out the techniques of biopower at work through them, exposing the ways in which passengers are made to live and rendered dead. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, I argue that the exceptional suspension of law at sea is integral to the rule of law on land.