In recent towing tank experiments, it has been observed that a ship moving near the critical speed $sqrt{gh}$(g=gravitational acceleration, h=water depth) radiates solitons upstream in an almost periodic manner. As a ,consequence, the ship experiences considerable changes in resistance, trim and sinkage, or better known as squat. Mei and Choi(1987) developed a nonlinear theory for a slender ship by using the method of matched asymptotic expansions. For a certain class of channel width and ship slenderness, they found that the waves generated can be described by an inhomogeneous Korteweg-de Vries(KdV) equation. The leading-order solution properly predicts solitons propagating upstream, but it fails to render three-dimensional waves in the wake. In this paper a new approach has been made by choosing a different class of channel width and ship slenderness. The wave equation in the farfield turns out to be a homogeneous Kadomtsev-Petviashvili(KP) equation, which predicts solitons upstream and three-dimensional waves in the wake. Numerical results for the wave resistance, sinkage and trim reflect the experimentally identified phenomena.