10 Biggest Ships In The World

Ships are great. They transport people, transport goods, they help fight wars, and best of all they transport cars. Oh, and they’re really big.

10.) USS Theodore Roosevelt 

A nuclear-powered United States Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with the ability to carry nearly ninety assorted aircraft. This ship might not be a destroyer, but she sure as hell has the power to fuck shit up. Coming in at more than 100,000 tons of displacement at full load, the Theodore Roosevelt is one of, if not the biggest military ship in the world.

Photo Credit: Des Morris 

9.) Shell Prelude

The Prelude is massive in not only size and displacement, but also in uses and capabilities. The Prelude was developed as a natural gas collecting rig and a natural gas liquefaction facility. This meant that for the first time ever, natural gas could be collected and basically refined, at sea. Natural gas collected from sea is generally piped directly to land to be liquefied and refined, but the Prelude allows for this whole step to be bypassed.

Photo Credit: Shell

8.) Dockwise Vanguard

As a semi-submersible ship, the Vanguard is able to sink herself below sea level. This allows for the ability to transport large ships, oil rigs, or whatever else. Because of her ability to carry other ships, the Vanguard can also act as a dry dock allowing for major repairs to be completed to other ships while at sea. With something else on top, it can get huge, as DMCVegas explains:

On her own, she has a tonnage of 116,173 DWT. However, this is a semi-submersible heavy lift ship. Fully loaded she can accommodate 110,000 DWT of cargo for a combined weight of 226,173. 

Photo Credit:Vanguard

7.) International Space Station

Though the International Space Station is technically a station and not a ship, she’s still large and in charge and in space. And besides, we’ll count it as a spaceship. The ISS serves as a vital space research facility for scientific research regarding the physics and biology of space, and it’s got almost a million pounds of mass.

Photo Credit: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center 

6.) Azzam

A floating mansion. A 590 foot, floating mansion, and the longest yacht in the world. How easy must it be to get lost in this thing? Oddly enough, it’s unusually shallow underneath the waves, with a draft of just a little over 14 feet.

Photo Credit: DiFooll 

5.) CSCL Globe

Launched just last year, the CSCL Globe is one of the largest container ships on the seas. She can carry over 19,000 twenty foot containers without even breaking a sweat.

Photo Credit: Keith

4.) TI Asia

The TI Asia is currently commissioned as a floating production storage and offloading vessel for crude oil. At full load, the TI Asia weighs in at over 509,000 tons of displacement, making it one of the biggest ships in the world. 

Photo Credit: Dan Tremper/United States Coast Guard

3.) MV Blue Marlin 

Best known for transporting a massive ocean-based radar unit (as shown above), several oil rigs, and even a war-damaged United States Navy destroyer, the Blue Marlin is not only a massive ship on her own terms, but she’s also capable of holding some of the larger ships and rigs that live on our seas.

Photo Credit: Marion Doss 

2) Oasis Of The Seas

Though she’s not much of a war fighter or hauler of goods, the Oasis Of The Seas can hold about 6000 vacationing passengers. I’m not much of an ocean-liner guy myself, but if I had to choose a ship to be trapped on for about a week, surely I would choose the one that has seven “neighborhoods” within itself.

Photo Credit: Dietmut Teijgeman-Hansen 

1.) MSC Oscar

After beating out the CSCL Globe container ship earlier this year, the MSC Oscartook the title of largest container ship. She’s so big, there may not even be a port large enough on the United States that she can dock to. Did I mention she can hold something like 39,000 cars? That’s kind of huge.

Photo Credit: Frans Berkelaar