My source was the UN Trade & Development organisation's Review of Maritime Transport 2014, which I'd looked up a ways back for an earlier essay.
Turns out I'd misremembered the size of the shipping fleet as of 2014, it was 47,601 ships, not ~80k, though that makes my point on this thread all the more apropos. I suspect I'd turned up the ~80k figure (if I recall, slightly less than, in the 70--80k range) from that or another source, and current fleet size is somewhat above that, keep reading. It should be remembered that current ships tend to be far larger than those of WWII, with the 2014 fleet totalling 1.68 million deadweight tonnes (DWT), or about 35 DWT on average. That's ... still lower than I'd have thought, as, for example, a Maersk E-Class container ship weighs in at 158,200 DWT,[2] and the largest oil tankers range up to 550,000 DWT.[3] From my sources earlier in this thread, WWII ships tended closer to 10,000 DWT.
The 47,601 ship number comes from summary line of the table on page 37 of the 2014 report, and applies to ships of 1,000+ DWT:
<https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/rmt2014_en...>
The UNTD's Review has been updated, the latest edition is for 2023:
<https://unctad.org/publication/review-maritime-transport-202...>
Full report: <https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/rmt2023_en...> (PDF) (English)
From that:
In January 2023, global maritime trade was transported on board 105,493 vessels of 100 gross tons (GT) and above, with oil tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships accounting for 85 per cent of total capacity.
(p. 29)
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Notes:
1. "Shipping and Safety: The nuclear option" (2015) <https://web.archive.org/web/20230604211742/https://old.reddi...>