Honouring the biggest ship ever built, and Hong Kong’s role in getting her afloat
The incredible story of Seawise Giant, which went on to be bombed, sunk and eventually salvaged to enjoy a second life on the ocean waves
Were this to be a big-budget fiction movie, critics would declare the plot to be absurd: the story of a ship – the largest ever built – being bombed, sunk and then hauled from the seabed and patched up to serve another 21 years.
Strange then, that so few people know the history – and strong link with Hong Kong – behind this gargantuan sea vessel: all 564,000 tonnes of her, 50 feet longer than New York’s Empire State Building is high, with a hold that could swallow London’s St Paul’s Cathedral four times over.
She was the largest self-propelled man-made object on the planet.
The ship, which aptly came to be called the Seawise Giant, was an ultra-large supertanker built by Sumitomo Heavy Industries in Japan for a Greek business mogul. By the time she was ready, in 1979, the tycoon had either changed his mind or had gone bankrupt (reports vary) and refused to take delivery.
After languishing in the shipyard, a deal was struck and the vessel was sold in 1981 to the founder of Hong Kong’s Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), Tung Chao-yung, father of the city’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa. (Seawise was a play on the initials of the founder’s given name.)
Not content with her already stonking size, Tung senior had the ship’s length extended a few more feet by way of ‘jumboization’ – a technique which involves bolting on another section – increasing the capacity by more than 140,000 tonnes.
Seawise Giant was now 1,504 feet in length and 225 feet in beam, record-breakingly large to this day, but not the most nimble of ships. She had a turning circle of about 3km, and it took her 9km to stop from her full speed of 16.5 knots, and that was in good weather.