This paper describes a simplified method for estimation of the ultimate compressive strength of actual ship panels with initial deflection of complex shape. The proposed method consists of the elastic analysis using the large deflection theory and the rigid-plastic analysis based on the collapse mechanism which also includes the large deformation effect. In order to reduce the computing time for the elastic large deflection theory and the rigid-plastic analysis based on the collapse mechanism which also includes the large deformation effect. In order to reduce the computing time for the elastic large deflection analysis, only one term of Fourier series for the plate deflection is considered. The results of the proposed method are in good agreement with those calculated by the elasto-plastic large deflection analysis using F.E.M. and the computing time of the proposed method is extremely short compared with that of F.E.M.