In this paper, robust adaptive boundary control for a flexible marine riser with vessel dynamics is developed to suppress the riser's vibration. To provide an accurate and concise representation of the riser's dynamic behavior, the flexible marine riser with vessel dynamics is described by a distributed parameter system with a partial differential equation (PDE) and four ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Boundary control is proposed at the top boundary of the riser based on Lyapunov's direct method to regulate the riser's vibration. Adaptive control is designed when the system parametric uncertainty exists. With the proposed robust adaptive boundary control, uniform boundedness under the ocean current disturbance can be achieved. The proposed control is implementable with actual instrumentation since all the required signals in the control can be measured by sensors or calculated by a backward difference algorithm. The state of the system is proven to converge to a small neighborhood of zero by appropriately choosing design parameters. Simulations are provided to illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed control. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.