The world’s largest cruise ship has made its maiden voyage from the port of Miami. The ship Icon of the Seas of the Royal Caribbean Company returned. The ship was named in the presence of football legend Lionel Messi and members of the Inter Miami football team. The ship is about 1200 feet long. This ship will travel for 7 days on its maiden voyage. Royal Caribbean is a shipping company with a history of 53 years. The biggest daily booking in the company’s history was for Icon of the Season.
Tanker ship: Representative Image: Canva AI
But Icon of the Seas is not the world’s largest ship. It is another ship called Seawise Giant. Giant is not a cruise ship like Icon of the Seas. Rather, it was a large oil tanker. It took five years from 1974 to 1979 to complete the construction of this ship. The ship was completed by Sumitomo Heavy Industries in Kanagawa, Japan. The length of the Giant was 458.45 meters. The construction was completed in the Japanese port of Kanagawa in 1979. The Seawise Giant could not travel through any of the shipping lanes such as the English Channel and the Suez Canal.
The order was placed by a Greek company to build the Sea Wise Giant. But after completion they refused to take it over and sold the vessel to Hong Kong Overseas Containerline. By this the Hong Kong Overseas Company meant the transportation of oil. The propeller of this giant ship alone weighed 50 tons. It was called the Titanic of cargo ships. Meanwhile, the Iran-Iraq war began when Iraq invaded Iran.
The main focus of the sea wise giant at that time was to deliver crude oil from the Gulf and Iran to the US. During such a trip, Iraqi parachute shooters fired at the ship anchored in the port of Larak in Iran. The ship burst into flames like fireworks. Then the owners abandoned the ship and the seawise giant fell asleep in oblivion in the seas. This sleep lasted for years. Meanwhile, the Iran-Iraq war ended. A Norwegian conglomerate named Norman International lifted the ship from the sea and brought it to Singapore. Here the ship underwent major repairs and was renamed the Happy Giant.
In 1991, Norwegian billionaire Joren Jarre bought the ship for 4 million US dollars and named it Jarre Viking. But not being able to go through the important routes like Suez Canal and Panama Canal became a big drawback on the ship. At that time the Indian captain named Surinder Kumar Mohan was the captain of the ship. In 2004 Norway’s Olsen Tankers bought the ship. But they used this ship not for sea voyage but as an oil storage in port.
In 2010, the name of Sea Wise Giant was changed once again. It was called Mont. Mont’s last trip was to India. Mont was scrapped in 2010 at Alang, Gujarat’s ship breaking yard. About ten workers participated in this demolition. Today only the ship’s anchor remains, in the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.