14 DAY TRIAL // The Leviathan is the Hebrew name of a Biblical sea monster, that has become synonymous to the largest aquatic monster or creature. In modern Hebrew, it means simply whale .
Modern day Leviathans are made not of flesh and bones, but of steel, cables, screws and bolts, and they roam the seas to carry freight or passengers, instead of sinking ships and eating sailors.
Before the Titanic sank, it was the largest ship in the world. What is the largest today, and how does it compare to the Titanic?
A classification of the biggest ships in world is pretty difficult, due to the complexity of meanings of the word biggest (length, width, height, displaced volume), but for each category, there is a top dog the king of the seas .
These days, cargo vessels are the largest ships around, and the king of these crafts is the oil tanker the Knock Nevis , formerly known as Seawise Giant, Happy Giant and Jahre Viking . The Norwegian owned supertanker is 458 meters (1504 feet) in length and 69 m (226 ft) in width, making her the largest ship in the world. She was built between 1979 and 1981, damaged during the Iran-Iraq War, and refloated in 1991, but is now used as an immobile offshore platform for the oil industry.
It has a deadweight of 564,763 tonnes and a summer displacement of 647,955 t when laden with nearly 650,000 m3 (4.1 million barrels) of petroleum. It has a draft of 24.6 m when fully loaded, which makes it impossible for it to navigate even the English Channel, let alone man-made canals at Suez and Panama.
When speaking of passengers, Freedom of the Seas is the largest luxury cruise ship in the world, owned by Royal Caribbean.
This cruise ship weighs 160,000 tons, it is 1,112 feet long, 184 feet wide and it has 15 passenger decks holding 3,634 guests double-occupancy. Freedom of the Seas towers 208 feet tall, approximately the same height as two of the Statue of Liberty, placed head to toe.
Since I mentioned the Titanic, formerly the largest ship in the world, it was 883 feet long, 93 feet wide, and weighed 45,000 tons. It boasted a squash court, swimming pool, and a gymnasium with a mechanical horse. The Titanic could hold 3,500 passengers and crew members but carried life boats for just over 1,000. There were approximately 2,200 unfortunate souls aboard when the "unsinkable" ship encountered the iceberg.
Of course, the military could be left out when it comes to superlatives.
USS Ronald Reagan is the largest military vessel, a supercarrier (aircraft carrier). Weird in the sense that it was christened after a president still alive at the moment of her launch, the ship displaces approximately 95,000 tons of water fully loaded and has a top speed of over 30 knots, powered by two nuclear reactors driving four screws, and can sail for 20 years before refueling.
She is nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall at 1,092 feet (333 m) and is 134 feet (41 m) wide at the beam and has a flight deck 252 feet (77 m) wide. The flight deck covers over 4.5 acres (18,000 m²). She carries more than 5,500 sailors and over 80 aircraft.
If you think these ships are the largest, biggest, enormous, or any other epithet comes to your mind now, better think again!
No cruise ship that has ever been built can compare to the enormity of Freedom Ship . Imagine a mile-long stretch of 25-story-tall buildings in New York City; now imagine that floating on the water. If you can picture that, then you get the general idea of her size. At 4,320 feet (1,317 meters) long, 725 feet (221 m) wide and 340 feet (103 m) tall, the ship is taller than the length of a football field and wider than two football fields put together. And not only can a ship that size float on water, but it may be navigating the world's oceans as early as 2009.
She will dwarf any ocean-going vessel operating today, being four times larger that Freedom of the Seas .
Freedom Ship will be built on top of 520 airtight steel cells that will be bolted together to form a sturdy base. The rest of the ship will be constructed on top of this base.It will take a tremendous amount of engine power to push the gigantic ship through the water. The vessel will be equipped with 100 diesel engines that can generate 3,700 horsepower each.
The ship's high construction cost will be passed on to residents, who will pay up to $11 million to purchase living space on the floating city!
I wonder if you can get seasick on or in the belly of that monster?