The invention relates to a ship area keeping control method based on position offset calculation, which comprises the following steps of: (1) inputting closed polygon outer boundary points of ship
dynamic positioning area keeping, setting a specific area in the outer boundary as an inner boundary, and controlling a ship to move to the center of an area keeping area; (2) stopping the control on the ship
propeller, so that the ship floats freely along with the
environmental force; if the ship moves to the inner boundary, the direction of a connecting line of the current position of the ship and the regional
centroid position is calculated, and the direction is recorded as the optimal heading direction of the ship; (3) the ship is controlled to move back to the position where the area keeps the center, and then control over the longitudinal position and the transverse position of the ship is closed; (4) when the ship floats to the inner boundary under the action of
environmental force, recalculating the direction of the connecting line of the current position of the ship and the area
centroid position, and updating the optimal heading direction; and (5) moving the ship to the area to keep the center, and repeating the operations from the step (3) to the step (4).