This paper presents a practical method to predict the characteristics of ship manoeuvring motions. A attempt is made to calculate the manoeuvring motions utilizing principal particulars of ship hull, properller and rudder as basic input data. The mathematical models, which describe the ship manoeuvring motions, are developed on the basis of MMG(5), Inoue(17), Hooft(18) and so on. Calcuations of manoeuvring motions for three kinds of typical characteristics, namely turning motion, zig-zag manoeuvre response and steady turning performance, are carried out. In order to examine the validity of the calculation method of this paper, simulations are run for seven merchant ships employed by Inoue(4). The computed results by present method are compared with full scale trials and Inoue's calculations(4). It can be concluded that the calculation method proposed in this paper is useful and pwoerful for prediction of characteristics of ship manoeuvring motions at the initial design phase or the application study on manoeuvring motions.