A cognitive approach to the development of maritime transport telecommunications is functionally essential for the development of maritime intelligent transport systems related to the management and development of weakly structured objects, systems, and situations. The use of cognitive models improves the soundness of decision-making in complex and rapidly changing situations at sea, while the task of analyzing and developing heterogeneous algorithms for managing cognitive networks largely boils down to the problem of network selection or vertical handover. The paper synthesizes a structural diagram of a ship cognitive network control system, including an intelligent agent, provides an algorithm for its operation, and mathematically substantiates the criteria for selecting a heterogeneous network and vertical handover. The advantages of sequential decision-making procedures are considered, which allow reducing the average duration of the decision-making procedure or significantly increasing the reliability of decisions, compared to any other possible decision-making procedures based on a fixed sample size that does not change during the decision-making process.