The conventional PID controller has been widely used in many industrial control systems although modern control theory has been remarkably developed recently. Because engineer can easily understand how to deal with the PID controller which consists of three parameters. This PID control method, however. has a tendency to depend on experience. Genetic Algorithm can search the control parameters according to systematic procedure in a selected plant. In this paper the real coded genetic algorithm is used to search proper values of the PID controller parameters for marine diesel engine. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.