Creating an ocean giant, in pictures
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The Pieter Schelte is the world’s biggest ship. But this outsized sea giant isn’t a supertanker, nor a container carrier. Its role is much more specialised – which is why it has to be such an enormous vessel.
The ship – which set sail last weekend from South Korea to the Dutch port of Rotterdam – is an oil support vessel, designed to install or move oil rigs in the deep ocean, lay oil pipeline, or even help construct bridges. And it’s those heavy-lifting jobs that require it to be so big; the Pieter Schelte is 382 metres (1,260 ft) long, and 124 metres (406 ft) wide. So, how do you construct such a large ship from scratch? -
The vessel is essentially a giant catamaran, “based on the concept of joining two large tankers rigidly, with a slot at the bows to lift platforms in one piece,” according to Kristian Hall from the boat’s Swiss owners, Allseas. The boat was built section-by-section in South Korea, on a giant floating dock in Okpo-dong harbour.
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Blocks of the ship were pre-assembled and then merged to make two “half-hulls” in floating docks.
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It took 16 million man hours to build the ship. If one person was working 40 hours a week it would take nearly 7,700 years to complete.
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The two hulls of the ship are so big they had to be towed to a new site to be spliced together.
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The ship reportedly cost £1.9bn ($3.1bn) to build.
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It has enough room to house 571 people – not just the crew, but the engineers and technicians needed to carry out the oil-support role.
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The Pieter Schelte displaces 365,000 tonnes – and that’s before you add the 48,000-tonne weight of an oil rig platform. The ship's weight is the equivalent of:
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The Pieter Schelte isn’t the longest boat on the high seas – that’s the container ship Maersk Triple E class, the first of which came into service in 2013. Here’s a comparison:
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And here’s how big the ship is compared with another Allseas support vessel, the Deepwater Asgard.
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The ships can generate 95mW of power to move its massive bulk – that’s enough electricity to power 5,000 homes for a day.
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It left port last week, and will take 50 days to reach Rotterdam, travelling via Singapore and Cape Town.
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You can keep track of it on the MarineTraffic website:
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And if you think this is big, Allseas are already planning an even bigger vessel that is expected to enter service in 2020…
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