This ship has the unenviable fate.
Seawise Giant was a real giant floating: twice the size of the Titanic. When it with extra 564 thousand tons of weight and length of over 450 meters, he couldn’t even go through the English channel. Having got under bombardment, the ship sank in 1988, but a year later was raised from the seabed and repaired. Seawise Giant, a total of six times changed hands and served after his resurrection two decades.
This supertanker, built in 1979, was much less known than the Titanic, though his story is no less epic.
This boat is so powerful and reliable that even after it was torn up by the missiles of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 and sank, he managed to raise from the bottom and repaired, after which the floating giant was served another 21 years! This Japanese supertanker was finally decommissioned and sold to India for scrap in 2009.
Seawise Giant was built in 1979 at a shipyard in Kanagawa, Japan. Greek shipping magnate who originally ordered it, refused to accept the ship by the time it is completed, and subsequently the tanker was sold to a Chinese company Orient Overseas, CY Tung – to transport oil across the ocean.
Not quite satisfied with his incredibly massive size, the new owner extended the ship by several meters, which added more than 100 000 tonnes to its capacity.
At this stage, only the rudder weighed 230 tons (as 46 elephants!), and screw – another 50 tons. The whole ship with a full load pulled more than 657 000 tonnes was the largest vessel of its kind ever built on Earth.
Subsequent years Seawise Giant spent in the transportation of huge quantities of crude oil from the Middle East to the United States. But in may 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war has been a catastrophe.
In anchored at the island of Larak in Iran in the shallows Seawise Giant hit Iraqi parachute bombs. Fire engulfed the ship, and eventually it sank, and the owners announced a decommissioned supertanker…
But that’s not the end of the story.
After the war ended in 1989, Seawise Giant, was raised from the seabed by the efforts of the Norwegian conglomerate Norman International. The vessel was taken to Singapore for major repairs, and its owners gave him the name “Happy giant”.
The ship with a length of 457 meters and a width of 70 meters required a large turning circle, as well as a dozen kilometers to gain full speed.
The tanker was acquired by the Norwegian tycoon named Jorgen AHR over 39 million dollars and was renamed Jahre Viking, which continued its service in October 1991.
Over time, however, gigantic size became more and more burdensome from the point of view of practicality. The ship was too large to navigate in deep enough waters, among which the English channel, the Suez and Panama canals…
Then, in 2004, the ship was bought by Norwegian company Knock Nevis, which turned the supertanker in stationary storage, moored at the oil field “by Qatar’s al-Shaheen” in the Persian Gulf.
There, the ship spent the remainder of his days, before finally was sold for scrap. There it was again renamed and called Mont made his last journey to the Indian plant for the analysis of marine vessels. Here worked on it tens of thousands of workers…
And only a unique 36-ton anchor of the tanker decided to keep: now it is kept at the Maritime Museum of Hong Kong as the last relics remaining from a legendary sea giant.
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