Subjects: Design

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.

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.

Step aboard the Emma Maersk for a glimpse at the adventures of the crew on a two-week, 13,000-kilometre crossing from Malaysia to Spain. At 20 storeys tall, this ship is capable of carrying millions of dollars worth of cargo in over 12,000 containers – enough to fill a freight train 70 kilometres long! Powered by the world’s largest diesel engine turning the world’s biggest propeller, this massive ship seldom stops. Every year, this magnificent vessel circumnavigates the globe seven-and-a-half times. Don’t miss this high speed, high risk seafaring adventure as the crew navigates the pirate-infested Strait of Malacca and Horn of Africa, dodges cyclones in the Indian Ocean and performs two major engine repairs at sea. But can the Emma Maersk overcome these challenges and make it through the Suez Canal to her final port in time?

Unlike most cruise ships, the Becrux is a mighty ship made for four-legged passengers. With a capacity of nearly 20,000 cattle or 60,000 sheep, the Becrux is the largest custom-built livestock carrier in the world. Her expert crew and stock handlers are renowned for getting their “passengers” from ranches in Western Australia to markets in Asia, North America and the Middle East quickly, safely and in as much comfort as possible. This is no small task as the seas she often sails – the Java Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea – are the home waters of some of the world’s most dangerous pirates. Becrux’s officers and crew need to be on constant guard, while her stock experts must be equally vigilant about the health of the animals they carry. While the rare combination of cowboys and sailors makes for ongoing competition as to whom is the toughest, a bridge full of Italian officers gives Becrux a style and an enviable cuisine all her own.

With the ability to ferry 8,000 luxury cars, heavy trucks and tractors from one continent to another, the Faust is the biggest and the newest ocean faring vehicle carrier on the planet. This ship boasts 13 decks the size of 11 football fields to accommodate her wheeled cargo – big or small – without leaving a single scratch or a dent. Not only is her capacity impressive, but every inch of Faust is designed to make her one of the most environmentally-friendly ships afloat. And with state-of-the-art technology throughout, she’s so fully automated she hardly needs a crew. But a winter crossing of the North Atlantic requires more than high-tech instrumentation to dodge rough waves and gale force winds directly in her path. Watch as this trip puts every one of her 22-member crew to the test.

Resolute and ships like her install and maintain the undersea cables that form the backbone of the international communications network. Resolute is one of the most efficient and technically advanced cable laying vessels ever built. In their first year of service, Resolute and her sister ships installed a remarkable 3500 kilometres of cable. The growing importance of telecommunications requires ever-increasing capacities for data transmission in all parts of the world.