Seawise Giant: The 1,504-Foot Oil Tanker

A 1,504-foot tanker couldn't use canals

Seawise Giant was an oil tanker built by Sumitomo Heavy Industries in Yokosuka, Japan, and delivered in 1979.

A later extension made it the longest self-propelled ship ever built.

It measured 1,504 feet (458 meters).

It also held the record for the greatest deadweight ever recorded. Deadweight is the measure of how much cargo, fuel, supplies and other weight a ship can carry.

Fully loaded, it displaced about 724,000 US tons (657,019 metric tonnes).

Its loaded draft was 81 feet (24.6 meters). That is how deep the hull sat in the water when the ship was fully loaded.

The English Channel, the Suez Canal, and the Panama Canal would not let it through.

Every trip began with a long run across open sea.

Its service speed was about 19 mph (31 km/h).

Stopping?

From full speed it needed at least 5.5 miles (8.9 km) to come to a halt.

The crude oil aboard could fill about 1,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

It also sailed as Happy Giant, Jahre Viking, Knock Nevis, and Mont.

In 2010 workers cut it up for scrap at Alang, India.

Longer than any ship before it.
And too long for the great canals.

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