Recently, larger container ships have been built for more efficiency of maritime transportation, consequently by the thicker of steel plates that have been used for its structure. Generally, "electrogas arc welding" (EGW) process, a single-pass vertical welding process having very high efficiency, has been used to join heavy-thick steel plates on the vertical direction in a ship building industry, especially in the part of a container ship structure such as a hatch side coaming. However, the EGW process causes very high heat input, which affects seriously on toughness deterioration of a welded joint, since it makes grains coarse and a heat affected zone (HAZ) width wide. Therefore, the novel vertical welding process with lower heat input is strongly demanded to join heavy-thick steel plates having high strength and high toughness. The present research proposes the novel vertical welding process for thick steel plates, using the laser diode as a heat source in combination with the hot-wire method, in order to achieve much lower heat input compared with the EGW process. This proposed welding process with low heat input should prevent grain growth and widening HAZ width and maintain toughness of a welded joint. In addition, the proposed process needs high efficiency by single-pass welding for thick steel plates in the vertical direction as with the EGW. In the proposed welding process, a high-power laser diode is used as a main heat source and the hot-wire method is used for efficient deposition. A large rectangular spot shape of a laser beam, which fits a groove width (gap) and plate thickness, is employed. The laser is irradiated continuously from the above the joint into the groove to create and keep a molten pool during welding. A reflected laser on a molten pool surface is utilized for melting groove surfaces efficiently. Filler wires are fed from both sides of the groove, and filler wires are heated up to its melting point by Joule heating using the hotwire system before entering the molten pool. YP-47 steel material for hull structure was used as base metal to joining for this research.