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.
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
