Radiation from merchant shipping is the most important cause of low‐frequency underwater ambient noise. Predictions of noise properties thus requires an understanding of the radiation characteristics—source level and directionality—of merchant ships. Since the adequate measurement and diagnosis of such properties of a full scale ship is very expensive, a 1:100 scale model of a typical 600 ft tanker was fabricated. The level of structural detail retained in the model was consistant with the frequency regime of interest, 5–50 Hz. In this paper, we describe the model and a series of measurements of the total radiated power and the structural response due to a point force applied at the location of the ship's main propulsion engine. We show that to first order the radiation from a point force is due to engine room hull vibration only, and that the total radiation impedance is relatively independent of frequency.