Comment by krisoft

There is a lovely bit of complication with it! Not saying to correct you, just because i think it is a lovely bit of trivia even though it has nothing to do with space debris.

Both sailing and power driven vessels need to give ways to (among other things) “vessel restricted in her ability to maneuver”. And an aircraft carrier launching or recovering aircraft is considered to be restricted in her ability to maneuver (quite rightfully so, it is hard enough to land on them without the ship swerving left and right).

So that means that a mighty aircraft carrier needs to (at least according to the regulations) dodge tiny sailing ships, but once they start launching or recovering aircraft it is the responsibility of the sailing ship to avoid them.

Source: Rule 18 of the ColRegs (The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972)