Heavy Lift Ships and their Impossibly Large Cargoes

When you need to transportation huge freight, products, and materials from one place to another, send is the best option even though they are extremely slow. Thousands of freight providers ply the ocean and oceanic masses each year, and they handle the volume of worldwide trade. Then there are weighty lift boats that are designed to carry extremely huge a lot that even freight boats cannot keep, such as other boats, exploration stations or anything else too huge or weighty to be easily transferred on a traditional send.

Heavy lift boats are of two types: semi-submerging capable of raising another send out of the water and moving it; and boats that enhance unloading features at improperly outfitted slots. Semi-submerging are more commonly known as a "flo/flo" for float-on/float-off. These boats have a lengthy and low well outdoor patio that can go down under water enabling oil systems, other boats, or other hovering freight to be shifted into position for running. The aquariums are then injected out, and the well outdoor patio goes up higher in the water, raising its freight, and is ready to cruise wherever on the globe the freight needs to be transferred.

The globe's first weighty lift boat was MV Lichtenfels (118 lengthy tons; 132 short tons) designed in the Twenties by the Bremen based delivery organization DDG Hansa. After Community War II, DDG Hansa became the biggest weighty lift delivery organization. Today that name is held by Dockwise which currently performs 19 weighty lift boats – the globe's biggest navy of semi-submersible boats of various sizes and kinds.

The flo/flo sector's biggest usage is the oil industry. They have transferred many oil exploration stations from their development website to the exploration website at approximately three to four times the speed of a self-deploying rig.

In 1988, the heavy lift ship Mighty Servant 2 towed the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts, which was nearly sunk by a naval mine in the central Persian Gulf. Eleven years later, MV Blue Marlin transported the U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Cole from Aden, Yemen to Pascagoula, Mississippi, after the warship was damaged in a bombing attack on 12 October 2000.

In 2004, Blue Marlin carried the world's largest semi-submersible oil platform, 60,000 tonne semi-submersible production rig, Thunder Horse, over 15,000 nautical miles from Okpo, Korea to Corpus Christi, Texas.

Many of the larger ships of this class are owned by the company Dockwise, including Mighty Servant 1, MV Blue Marlin, and MV Black Marlin. The company is currently building another heavy weight named the Vanguard that will have 50% greater lifting capacity and 70% greater deck area than the largest heavy lift ship now in service, the Blue Marlin. At 275 meters (902 feet) long and 70 meters (230 feet) wide, the Vanguard can lift 110,000 tonnes and travel across oceans at 14 knots.

Dockwise Swan loading a smaller ship on the deck

Dockwise Tern in the process of loading an oil platform

Dockwise Black Marlin with an oil plaform

MV Blue Marlin goes underwater to prepare for loading.

MV Blue Marlin carrying USS Cole after the warship was damaged in a bombing attack

MV Blue Marlin with an oil platform on its deck

The coastal mine-hunters USS Cardinal (MHC-60) and USS Raven (MHC-61) sit on the deck of MV Blue Marlin after de-ballasting operations, which lifted the mine-hunters onto the MV Blue Marlin’s deck for transport.

The heavy lift vessel MV Blue Marlin with its deck cargo of the Sea-Based X-Band Radar enters Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after completing a 15,000-mile journey from Corpus Christi, Texas, on January 9, 2006.