In this paper, a nonlinear sliding modes intrusion control algorithm is developed to address the challenges posed by uncertain disturbances and deception attacks within the context of formation control for surface multi-ship systems. First, a leader-following formation system was designed, with the following ships being named as follow ship 1 and follow ship 2, respectively. Then, to solve the jitter problems in the sliding mode control process, a new nonlinear mode surface is designed. Next, single parameters are employed to address the intricate challenges by uncertain perturbation and deception attacks. Finally, the stability of the algorithm is proved by using Lyapunov theory. Through a comparative analysis and verification against the traditional sliding mode control, the position tracking accuracy of the leading ship and the following ship can be improved by 33.33%, 45.45%, 45% respectively. The results show that the formation control accuracy is better with the same deception attack probability than with the traditional sliding mode algorithm.