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MV Fairplayer is the latest, biggest and strongest in a new class of heavy-lift mega-ships built to transport super-sized equipment. When her two gigantic onboard cranes – capable of lifting 900 tons each – get to work loading, it’s like watching a sci-fi movie about invading Transformers. It’s a high-risk event as MV Fairplayer loads up for her maiden mission, carrying enormous oil refinery machinery from Italy to a hurricane-ravaged port in Texas. There’s tension right off the top, because when the massive load hits the deck, the sudden weight can capsize the ship if her ballast tanks aren’t flooded at the exact same moment. MV Fairplayer must use her self-tilting system to do a delicate dance and maintain her balance as everything is loaded.

The USS Nimitz – a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. A floating city. And the most powerful weapon on the planet. She’s the biggest, meanest, most lethal weapon in the arsenal of a global power. The USS Nimitz, like the whole US Navy, has to be ready for any mission, anywhere in the world. That’s why she undergoes a rigorous – and often dangerous – evaluation before every deployment. And for four days in February, Mighty Ships was aboard while the supercarrier and her young crew were put through their paces.

In the midst of a giant offshore wind farm, a fantastical ship comes to a stop, jacks up on six enormous legs, and plants itself on the ocean floor. Meet MV Resolution, the world’s first self-elevating ship purpose-built solely to build wind farms in the middle of the ocean. Mighty Ships is aboard for every jaw-dropping minute as she sails into Solway Firth off the west coast of Scotland, construction site of the Robin Rigg Wind Farm.

Just off the coast of South Africa, a futuristic remote crawler creeps along the ocean floor. Its high tech nozzle is sucking up seabed gravel that’s full of diamonds, and hoovering them up to the mother ship on the surface – MV Peace in Africa – the world’s biggest underwater mining vessel. MV Peace in Africa is looking for diamonds. And Mighty Ships is aboard, capturing the drama as she tries to mine her goal of 240,000 carats a year. We see the diamonds hunted, piped to the ship above, and processed in a complex on-board plant, all in a high security environment that includes 200 surveillance cameras.

In a country whose economy is almost 100% based on fishing, Akamalik, the high-tech star of Royal Greenland’s trawler fleet, plays a critical role. Akamalik is a floating, ultra-modern processing plant and a rugged shrimp boat, all in one sleek package. Fishermen haul in the catch from her gigantic eco-friendly trawling net and send it on conveyers to a pristine below decks processing plant that runs 24 hours a day. The shrimp is sorted, the by-catch removed for separate packaging, and all are boxed and frozen.

The MV Paul R. Tregurtha is the longest freighter working on the Great Lakes, a thousand-foot vessel capable of carrying 68,000 tons of taconite ore pellets or 71,000 tons of coal. The reigning “Queen of the Lakes,” this immense ship was built to contend with the harsh weather conditions of North America’s inland seas (which famously caused the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, killing her entire crew). The flagship of Interlake Steamship Company, the Tregurtha is a self-unloading bold carrier able to empty her cargo holds using a specially-built onboard discharge boom.

HDMS Absalon, one of the most modern warships in the world, has set sail to stop modern-day pirates off the coast of Somalia. Modern-day pirates have been terrorizing the waters off Somalia, capturing ships and taking hostages at gunpoint with increasing frequency. Brand-new and state-of-the-art, HDMS Absalon has set sail to stop them. HDMS Absalon is sleek, futuristic and well-equipped to battle the pirates she encounters. She carries surface to air missiles, torpedoes, and helicopters. Her roll-on/roll-off flexible deck can accommodate vehicles up to 62 tons, like the Leopard II main battle tank. She’s designed for naval warfare, land attack, strategic sealift missions or as a command platform.