The Largest Ship Ever Built

January 18, 2012 7:22 PM

Seawise Giant - later known as Happy Giant, Jahre Viking, and Knock Nevis - was the largest ship ever built.
posted by Trurl (16 comments total)

Amazing. How those ships survive the Cape rollers, I have no idea.
Why not tell the end of the story? It's always sad, but on the other hand she didn't sink ignominiously.
posted by zomg at 7:33 PM on January 18

Would love to hear more about how the ship was sunk in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:46 PM on January 18

Interesting, but anyone else find the video unbearable?
posted by blue shadows at 7:49 PM on January 18

This looks like it might be her on Google maps, ready to be broken in Alang.
posted by unSane at 7:57 PM on January 18

knock nevis (for wilson zorn and j.p. jenkins)
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:20 PM on January 18

Did anyone else look at the outline chart in the first link and mentally place between three and five plastic pegs into each ship?
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:36 PM on January 18 [6 favorites]

The change in freeboard from loaded to unloaded is amazing.
posted by TheJoven at 9:00 PM on January 18

One Container Ship Pollutes As Much As 50 Million Cars.
posted by stbalbach at 9:13 PM on January 18 [3 favorites]

Well, might get it down to 40 million... Parasail-Powered Cargo Ships.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 11:15 PM on January 18

Would love to hear more about how the ship was sunk in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.

Both sides, but Iran particularly, mined indiscriminately:
The asymmetric strategy proved itself to be efficient during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Iran was conducting successful hit-and-run operations using groups of small boats against vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Combined with extensive mine-laying in the strait, the guerrilla tactics allowed Iran to sink over 500 vessels during the war. However, in a direct confrontation with a US fleet after an Iranian mine caused damage to a US frigate, Iran’s navy was crushed.

Iran was known to recruit "martyrs" who would clear land-mine fields with themselves. It was a brutal war.
posted by dhartung at 2:28 AM on January 19 [1 favorite]

Related: Supertanker (and container) wooden toys.

I wish they'd made the containers to scale on the Emma model...
posted by joshwa at 5:10 AM on January 19

stbalbach linked above to something titled One Container Ship Pollutes As Much As 50 Million Cars. From this link:

a single container ship may ... release as much as 5,000 tons of sulfur oxide into the air annually
...
(the average car emits about 101 grams of sulfur annually compared to the 5,000 tons of a large container ship).
Source: The Guardian

Well, which is it? Five thousand tons of sulfur oxide or of sulfur? They're different things. Let's look at this source in the Guardian:

Cars driving 15,000km a year emit approximately 101 grammes of sulphur oxide gases (or SOx) in that time. The world's largest ships' diesel engines which typically operate for about 280 days a year generate roughly 5,200 tonnes of SOx.

So they're saying something else; oxides of sulphur are somewhat complicated, you get a mixture of a whole lot of things which, of course, all weigh different amounts. 5,000 tons of sulphur makes closer to 10,000 tons of sulphur dioxide.

And then the initial article claims that sulfur emissions are 'contributing heavily to global warming', and provides a link to a fairly inane piece of writing that does not so much as include the word 'sulfur' (or 'sulphur'). It's true that sulphur emissions are not nice things to have around, being the main cause of acid rain, but any effect they have on the global climate is in terms of cooling rather than warming (let's have another Guardian link for that).

In conclusion: heavy fuel oil is nasty, polluting stuff, but the article linked above is a piece of nonsense. SOx Emission Control Areas have been enforced in European waters since 2006 (Baltic) and 2007 (North Sea and English Channel)*, and an Emissions Control Area for SOx and NOx in US and Canadian waters since 2010 (I think?).
posted by Lebannen at 5:38 AM on January 19 [2 favorites]

This looks like it might be her on Google maps

She's been broken up in 2010 (scroll down until you see it).
posted by hat_eater at 6:34 AM on January 19

This looks like it might be her on Google maps Another reason why not: that looks like an OBO, a ship originally intended to work both as a dry bulk cargo ship and a tanker, able to carry Oil, Bulk and Ore. I can tell by the hatch covers and also from seeing a lot of ships in my time. (The Knock Nevis seems to have had her helideck aft, too, and that one has it on the port side midships.)
posted by Lebannen at 6:47 AM on January 19 [1 favorite]

For her last voyage to the scrapheap they renamed her Mont.

Building comparison
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:25 AM on January 19

Wow - those toy ships joshwa linked are really charming. Also, this post is very cool, but makes me sad that the freedom ship project, which might have been 3x the length of the seawise giant, never got underway. Luckily the seasteading institute are working on a similar concept.
posted by ianhattwick at 8:29 AM on January 19