Producers: Exploration Production Inc.

Canadian Coast Guard Ship Amundsen is a rare breed of ship; a research icebreaker whose job is to battle Arctic extremes to understand how global warming will radically change life in the high Arctic. Amundsen is the vanguard of a rising wave of ships that will soon navigate a real Northwest Passage. For 500 years, mariners have sought the Holy Grail; an Arctic route to the Orient. Global warming is now turning fiction into fact as the indomitable Arctic icepack melts revealing open, navigable water.

Cristóbal Colón, aka Christopher Columbus, the world’s newest, largest, hi-tech ocean dredger, like her historic namesake, heralds the beginning of a bold new era of ships that will make a global impact.

Queen Mary 2 is the biggest, most expensive ocean liner ever to set sail. She is a veritable city at sea, a marvel of both luxury and engineering, and is the fastest passenger ship in operation with engines powerful enough to light up a city of 250-thousand. But this queen is no lightweight, at 150-thousand tons she can still turn on a dime. Watch as Exploration Productions Inc. captures how the ship works and how the ship’s crew manages to guide this masterpiece of engineering across the turbulent waters of the North Atlantic, all while the 2600 fortunate passengers ride the seas for a luxurious voyage of a lifetime.

Marine research vessel G.O. SARS uses advanced technologies to travel north of the Arctic Circle in search of new life forms living in extreme conditions beside toxic subsea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents.

Africa Mercy is the world’s largest NGO hospital ship. She travels port to port in the world’s poorest regions providing medical care to people who may have never met a doctor or visited a hospital. 150m long and equipped with six state-of-the-art operating theatres, Africa Mercy can deliver medical care as good as any big city hospital in North America.

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.

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.