Cutting Edge Engineering: The World's Biggest Container Ship

Background History

Worldwide shipping has increasingly grown throughout the last decade. The demand for items in weeks, if not days, has now become commonplace. To help fill this demand, Daewoo in South Korea built the MSC Oscar for $140,000,000 in 2015. It continues to hold the record for the largest container ship in the world and operates as a container ship on a daily basis. Mediterranean Shipping Company now owns the ship.

How It Works

The capacity of the MSC Oscar is 14,000 TEU. Since the ship is so large, it is not able to dock in most ports across the world, including all American ports. Mediterranean Shipping Company says that many similar ships are in the construction process, and plans to make ships that can reach up to a staggering 22,000 TEU. They also state that as the ships grow, the efficiency grows as well. This means that the negative environmental impact is decreased, helping to sustain the world we live in.

Impacts/Future Outlook

As the shipping industry continues to grow, boats can be expected to also grow larger. While there are many engineering challenges in building larger boats, it is definitely possible. The size of existing ports also pose problems, but if ports are enlarged than it is possible.

Pros

Can carry more containers
Positive environmental impact

Cons

Most existing docks can not support boats this large

Works Cited

Dreamer. “20 Biggest Boats In The World.” Ezvid Rank, 14 Mar. 2017, rank.ezvid.com/biggest-boats-in-the-world#1-msc-oscar.

Minter, Adam. “Ships Have Gotten Too Big.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 14 June 2016, www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-14/ships-have-gotten-too-big.

“World's Largest Container Ship Is Too Big for U.S. - CNN Video.” CNN, Cable News Network, 9 Mar. 2015, www.cnn.com/videos/world/2015/03/09/pkg-boulden-uk-massive-ship-msc-oscar.cnn.