Shipbuilding History

The Titanic was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Construction began in 1909 and the ship was launched in 1911. At the time, she was the largest ship ever built.

HMS Warrior, launched in 1860, was the first iron-hulled, armored warship powered by a combination of steam and sail. Her iron armor plating made wooden warships obsolete and revolutionized naval warfare.

Clipper ships were built for speed and were primarily used in the tea trade from China and the wool trade from Australia. The Cutty Sark, now preserved in Greenwich, London, is the most famous surviving clipper ship.

Welded hull construction replaced riveted construction during and after World War II. Welding created stronger, lighter, and more watertight hulls that were faster to build. Liberty Ships were early mass-produced welded vessels.

Viking longships had a remarkably shallow draft (as little as 50 cm) that allowed them to navigate rivers and coastal waters where other ships could not go, and their flat bottoms allowed them to be beached directly on shores.

The USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, launched by the United States in 1954. In 1958, it became the first vessel to complete a submerged transit beneath the North Pole.

The keel is the central structural member running the length of a ship's bottom. It serves as the primary structural backbone from which the hull is built, provides stability, and prevents the vessel from being pushed sideways by wind.

Liberty Ships were mass-produced using prefabricated sections and welding. While the average build time was about 42 days, the SS Robert E. Peary set a record of just 4 days 15 hours from keel-laying to launch. Over 2,700 were built during the war.

A double hull has an inner and outer hull separated by a void space. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, international regulations required oil tankers to have double hulls to prevent or reduce oil spills from grounding or collisions.

Ulsan is home to Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world's largest shipbuilder. South Korea dominates global shipbuilding, with companies in Ulsan, Geoje, and other coastal cities producing a large share of the world's new commercial vessels.

The SS Great Eastern was by far the largest ship built until the early 20th century, at 211 meters long. She was five times larger than any ship previously built and her size was not surpassed for almost 40 years.

Displacement is the weight of water displaced (pushed aside) by a ship's hull, which equals the ship's total weight (Archimedes' principle). It is the standard measure of a ship's size and weight in naval architecture.

The largest ships ever built by displacement are the Seawise Giant class of Ultra Large Crude Carriers (ULCCs). The Seawise Giant (later Jahre Viking) was 458 meters long and had a deadweight tonnage of 564,763 tonnes.

The earliest Egyptian boats were made by bundling papyrus reeds together, a technique still used in some parts of Africa. Later, Egyptians developed advanced wooden boat construction, as seen in the Khufu ship found near the Great Pyramid.

The Icon of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship as of 2024, can carry approximately 5,610 passengers (double occupancy) and has a gross tonnage of 250,800. With crew, it can have over 7,600 people aboard.