A real option to defer model is established to study the ship investment opportunity with the hypothesis that the net operating cash flow follows the geometric Brownian motion. The empirical analysis is performed with the real data of ship building costs,operating costs and the revenue of Panama containerships on Far East to North-Western Europe liner shipping route from 2001 to 2012. It shows that recovery and peak stage are suitable for investment,such as 2001 to 2008 and the first three quarters of 2010....