The Biggest Ship in the World Might Not Even Be a Ship
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Five months ago, when the Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller embarked on its maiden voyage, the 400-meter-long vessel was the largest ship in the world. That title is already under assault.
An even bigger ship floated out of dry dock on Wednesday from a shipyard on the other side of the South Korean island where Maersk’s gigantic Triple-E models are being built. The new record-holder is the Shell Prelude, a vessel measuring 488 meters (1,601 feet) from end to end. At that size, it’s not only the biggest ship in the world, it’s the biggest ever built—longer even than the Seawise Giant, a supertanker built in the late 1970s and scrapped three years ago.