Given the complex and time-varying external disturbances of inland waterways, designing an accurate path following controller is challenging. Based on the traditional PID controller, combined with the servo system model and the lead compensator, an adaptive feedforward PID controller for path following of ships in inland waterways is designed considering ship maneuverability and external disturbances. Simulations of a ship in a curved channel in different scenarios are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed path following method. Compared with the traditional path following controller, the proposed one based on adaptive feedforward PID control has favorable relative stability, anti-interference ability and high steady-state precision in inland waterways.