This paper is concerned with the design of neural-network based autopilot control system. The back-propagation neural network introduced in the previous paper by authors is applied to the autopilot control system. As a result, two neural-network controllers are developed, which are the model reference adaptive neural controller and the instantaneous optimal neural controller. The model reference adaptive neural controller is the control technique that the heading angle and angular velocity are controlled by the rudder angle to follow the output of the reference model. The instantaneous optimal neural controller optimizes the transition from one state to the next state. These control techniques are applied to a simple ship maneuvering model and their effectiveness is proved by numerical examples.