The largest ship ever built is the Seawise Giant. Originally built as an Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC), it was 458.45 meters (1,504 ft) long and had a deadweight tonnage of 564,763 metric tons. While the ship was dismantled in 2010, it is still today the longest and heaviest self-propelled vessel ever to be built.
The Largest Ship in the World
The largest ship ever built is a supertanker that went by numerous names over the years, but was most commonly referred to as the Seawise Giant (or the Knock Nevis later in its lifetime). It remains the longest, heaviest, and largest ship ever built. It was a combination of impressive length, deadweight tonnage, and displacement that ruled the seas.
The vessel was commissioned in 1974 by a Greek shipping magnate, and constructed by Sumitomo Heavy Industries at their Oppama shipyard in Kanagawa, Japan. But the original owner withdrew its order, and the ship was bought by Hong Kong shipping magnate C.Y. Tung, who commissioned a dramatic structural extension.
The Story of Becoming the Seawise Giant
The Seawise Giant did not start out as the world's longest ship. It became so by a process called "jumboization". In 1979, the ship was unnamed and in 1981, it was acquired by C.Y.Tung who asked for modifications to be done on the ship, and in the process the vessel was sliced into two parts and a mid-section was introduced which expanded the ship length by 100 meters. This process of expansion was known as jumboization. The extended ship was renamed the Seawise Giant and became the largest ship in the world.
Seawise Giant was so huge in size that it was not able to navigate the English Channel, the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal.
Seawise Giant: History and Name Change
The life and times of the Seawise Giant is enough to warrant an encyclopedia entry on the ship's resilience. The Seawise Giant was an Ultra Large Crude Carrier that was designed to transport large volumes of oil between the Middle East and the US.
In May 1988, in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War, the Seawise Giant was bombed by Excocet missiles by an Iraqi jet while at anchor off Larak Island in Iran. The ship burned, sank in shallow water and was believed to be lost. But after the war, the remains of the ship were bought, recovered and taken to Singapore for repairs.
It was repaired and returned to service as the Happy Giant, sold and renamed the Jahre Viking, and then converted into a floating storage and offloading unit (FSO) as the Knock Nevis. Its last trip was as the Mont to Alang, India, for scrapping in 2010.
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