The Seawise Giant: The Middle Eastern Oil Tanker That Refused to Die

[Music] over the last 150 years the size of the ships plying our oceans has absolutely exploded we all know about the titanic and its record-breaking size but compared to the ship that was famously too big to safely navigate the english channel suez canal and the panama canal it pales in comparison this is the story of a ship that shattered countless records for size weight and tonnage and one that had five different names throughout its turbulent 31 year life the seawise giant remains to this day the longest and heaviest ship ever to set sail it's 458 meter length was higher than the empire state building while its colossal deadweight tonnage how much weight it could carry of 554 000 tons was equal to that of 40 brooklyn bridges however the most striking piece of information regarding the seawise giant just in case we haven't struck you enough already was that it was once attacked and sunk making it not only the biggest ship in history but also the largest shipwreck but that wasn't the end far from it like some mythical sea monster the sea wise judge rose from the depths and lived to fight another day and by fight we mean whole cargo [Music] the seawise giant was ordered by a greek company in 1974 from sumitomo heavy industries construction of the mighty ship took place at the company's aparma shipyard in yokosuka kanagawa in japan and it was completed in 1979. it was perhaps foreboding that the seawise giant ran to problems almost as soon as it was ready during early sea trials the ship experienced severe vibration whenever it was going astern that's in reverse the vibrations baffled many and it led to the greek company refusing to take possession of the ship which by the way did not officially have a name at this point it was just simply known as 1016. a lengthy legal proceeding took place which eventually resulted in the ship being sold to hong kong shipping magnate cy tong founder of hong kong orient overseas container line which at its peak had over 150 vessels in its fleet not satisfied with its already extraordinary size tongue ordered that it be enlarged through a process known as jumboization now we're well aware that that word does sound like something we just made up but jumboization is when a ship is enlarged by adding an entire section to it with large ships like 1016 this is often done by effectively cutting the ship in half and adding a new central section to increase its size what finally emerged after a mammoth two-year operation which added around a hundred thousand tons of extra tonnage was the seawise giant now the longest ship in history and twice as long as the titanic the name seawise is a play on words of the owner's name cy tongue and it became common for many of his ships to carry this same name the rms queen elizabeth which versacell in 1939 was later sold to tongue and ended its life as the seawise university before a fire almost completely destroyed the vessel in hong kong's victoria harbor in 1972 [Music] the ship was now an oil tanker of monstrous proportions with 46 oil tanks on board and a deck measuring 31 451 square meters this is almost exactly the same size as the lincoln memorial reflecting pool in washington dc if you would like a comparison its drafts the length from the water line to the keel at the bottom of the ship which is roughly the minimum depth that the ship can operate in was 24.6 meters making it a constant headache for the crew to give you a good comparison here that's over twice the size of the draft of the uss nimitz the american super carrier which is already absolutely massive but everything about this ship involved colossal sizes its rudder weighed 230 tons about the same as two blue whales while its sole propeller weighed 50 tons and measured a huge 9.1 meters in diameter its fully loaded water displacement essentially how much water the ship replaces when it's at sea was an extraordinary 646 642 tons well over 6 times that of the uss nimitz it was powered by two mitsubishi v2 m8 boilers producing a combined 50 000 horsepower which pushed the ship along at a maximum speed of 16.5 knots which is just over 30 kilometers an hour she certainly wasn't the fastest ship around but she took some time stopping and we mean that pretty literally when the seawise giant was motoring along at full speed it would take around 9 kilometers to come to a complete stop while a full turning circle in clear weather required three kilometers the seawise giant spent the early years of a youth transporting oil primarily between the middle east and the united states for all intents and purposes it was a fairly serene seven years but it came to a catastrophic end on the 14th of may 1988 by may 1988 the iran-iraq war was in its eighth year what had begun with the iranian invasion of iraq on the 20th of september 1980 developed into a harrowing bloody stalemate that would claim the lives of over a million soldiers and a hundred thousand civilians on the 14th of may the seawise giant was anchored off the coast of iran and while transferring oil to another supertanker the spanish at barcelona iraqi planes began attacking a nearby iranian oil platform in the strait of hormuz no doubt in the hope of stemming iran's steady supply of oil whether iraqi pilots were ordered to attack other vessels in the vicinity is not immediately clear but suddenly the five oil tankers nearby were the new targets parachute bombs began raining down from the sky and with the seawise giants for normal size she was an easy target quickly the ship was a blaze a vast deck a series of smoldering infernos there are conflicting reports of the chaos that ensued that day it's believed that 14 of the crew of the seawise giant died while the remaining was successfully evacuated a nearby u.s warship approached the area but was warned off by iranian authorities who instead sent in salvage tugs to fight the fires with giant oil tankers on fire this was like trying to put out a house fire with a water pistol the situation had already reached a critical stage the barcelona was in a terrible state and soon began listing heavily with two of her crew unaccounted for it would take two further days for the spanish giants to finally creep below the waves none of the five ships anchored off the coast that day had escaped the attack the british flag vessel burma endeavour iranian tanker carc and the cypriot ship argosy had all been badly damaged but they'd all stay afloat the same could not be said for the largest ship in the world with fires burning out of control and iranian authorities powerless to help it was only a matter of time for the seawise giant with news of the mighty tanker's perilous situation now breaching around the world the vast juggernaut slowly began listing her compartments filling with water later that day she could stay afloat no longer and began slipping below the surface she remains the largest ship to have ever sunk unsurprisingly the ship's owners wrote off the seawise giant completely it was thought that the hellish destruction it had received would have rendered her entirely inoperable even if the ship had remained afloat but not everybody shared that pessimism the iran-iraq war continued for a further three months before coming to an uncomfortable stalemate and with that a shaky peace began in the area almost a year after her sinking the wreck of the seawise giant was purchased by a norwegian company called norman international who soon after embarked on the largest salvage operation in history norwood international successfully managed to not only successfully refloat the seawise giants but get it all the way back to singapore exact details of this operation are vague so we can only presume how it went large ships like this in relatively shallow areas are typically raised by using airbags or inner tubes that are placed either around the ship or within it then filled with oxygen which in theory brings the ship to the surface sometimes cranes are used but with c-wise giant size this seems unlikely if the ship had substantial structural damage that would have prevented it being towed it would likely have been patched up enough to get it back to port by salvage specialists on site as i said there are few details about this specific operation and unfortunately that's the best we can surmise about it in singapore it underwent significant repairs and re-emerged in 1991 under the new name happy giant that same year it was purchased by norwegian ship owner jorgen jaha for 39 million about 74.5 million today and renamed yet again now known as the jarrah viking this vast floating ship had defied the odds and once again began transporting cargo around the world but now under the norwegian flag we don't know a lot about the jar of biking over the subsequent years which for a ship we can only assume is going to be a good thing after the carnage off the coast of iran no doubt this was a ship perfectly happy to stay well clear of the limelight in 2004 it was again sold this time to first olson tankers who again chose to rename it now it became known as the knock nevis however the ship's ocean-going days were now behind her the vast operating cost of the knock nervous meant that the ship often operated at a loss the beast had become a costly burden and first olson tankers had purchased the ship with the express desire of turning it into a stationary storage ship to be moored near the persian gulf's qatar al shaheen oilfield and there she remained until 2009 when the decision was taken that the largest ship in the world would be scrapped the ship was given its last name monts which it would only have for the duration of its final journey the wand arrived off the coast of india in december 2009 but if it was hoped that such a colossal piece of engineering might have some kind of fanfare for its glorious send-off well it wasn't to be the shipyard chosen to scrap the mont was portal lang the largest ship dismantling site anywhere in the world where roughly 50 percent of the world's vessels come to be broken down but the mont did not dock gracefully instead like almost every other vessel that arrived at portal lang the mont sailed directly towards the beach running itself aground on the indian sand it was the last movement the mont would ever make [Music] even in death this ship made an extraordinary impression an estimated 18 000 laborers took the better part of a full year to strip the mont down in the end all that was left was the gigantic 36-ton anchor which was returned to hong kong and placed on display at the maritime museum the last remnant of a mighty beast who once ruled the seas so are we going to see something like this anytime soon well almost certainly not while skyscrapers are still getting higher aircraft are still getting faster and microchips are still getting smaller we've probably reached the tipping point with super tankers the vast costs and highly volatile oil market has meant that it's been a difficult period for oil tanker owners there have even been instances of tankers moving slower than necessary in the hope the prices will have risen by the time they dock the world is slowly moving away from oil which means something comparable to the seawise giant seems unlikely the longest supertankers currently in operation are the t1 class ships measuring 380 meters in length a full 78 meters shorter than the seawise giant cruise ships on the other hand are getting considerably bigger and the proposed 6 billion floating city called freedom will likely displace around 2.7 million tons of water over four times that of the seawise giant but well let's save that for another video the story of this giant ship has a somewhat cinematic quality to it its record-breaking statistics its fiery demise and its improbable return to the global stage is a barely believable story arc and it may well be that we'll never see another ship quite like the seawise giant the largest self-propelled man-made object that humans have ever created so i really hope you enjoyed that video please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe as always thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

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Id: WAM6D0LUoqc

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021