It's fairly easy to sort out what's the biggest car or the fastest car in the world. Determining the biggest ship is much more subjective, and here are Jalopnik readers' ten picks.
Welcome back to Answers of the Day - our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day's Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It's by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!
Now, we could have restricted ourselves only to ships that have been constructed, but where's the fun in that? It's way better to go a step deeper down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and check into proposed ship designs that never quite worked out. That's why there are a few ships on here that will never touch water.
We would also like to mention that no ship on this list is a great as the Good Ship Earth, this little blue ball we all ride on through the cosmos.
And if we could be so bold, let us also say that no ship could ever be as grand or as wonderful as worldwide friendship. Go ahead and hug the person sitting next to you right now. If you're crying while you're reading this, that's perfectly understandable. Tears of joy at the wonderment of humanity are pouring out at this end, too.
As we said before, the 'largest ship' title is very subjective and can be measured in a number of metrics, so please let us know in Kinja below if you disagree with our choices.
Photo Credit: Maersk
10.) Roman Abramovich's Eclipse is the world's longest operating private yacht at 162.5 meters, with a gross tonnage of 13,000 tonnes.
Suggested By: jbh, Photo Credit: Getty Images
9.) The world's largest nuclear icebreaker is the 50 Let Pobedy. It's 159.60 meters long and GT is 23,439 tonnes. Plus it's a giant nuclear powered ship that cuts through ice.
Suggested By: Zergonn, Photo Credit: wikimedia
8.) The biggest ships are ships that carry other ships. In this case, the Dockwise Vanguard is the biggest, at only 91,238 GT and 263 m.
Suggested By: My X-type is too a real Jaguar
7.) The WWII-era Japanese Yamato was the biggest battleship ever made, displacing 71,659 tonnes and stretching 256 meters, but the proposed Nazi Schlachtschiff H-44 would have dwarfed it. 131,000 tonne displacement and 345 m long.
Suggested By: AVH and Kerberos824, Photo Credit: Richard Allison
6.) Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas/Oasis of the Seas twins are the largest passenger ships ever constructed, with a gross tonnage of 225,282 tonnes and a length of 362 meters. Allure of the Seas is technically longest by 50 millimeters.
Suggested By: gfreestone, Photo Credit: Daniel Christensen
5.) The FSO Asia/FSO Europe twins are TI-class supertankers and at 236,638 gross tons and 380 meters, they are the largest existing ships in the world. They're too big to be profitable, and are now just floating storage platforms.
Suggested By: ranwhenparked, Photo Credit: PA2 Dan Tremper
4.) Ordered in 1974 and scrapped in 2010 the supertanker Seawise Giant was the longest, heaviest ship ever made at 260,941 gross tonnage and 458.45 meters. It was so big, it couldn't pass through the English Channel. The Channel was too small for the Seawise Giant.
Suggested By: MKIV_GTI_Turbo, Photo Credit: Auke Visser
3.) The Pierre Guillaumat supertanker was arguably larger than the Seawise Giant, at a massive 274,838 gross tons. It was only 414.23 meters long, and frankly, it was just as oversized as any other gigantic suprtanker. It was too big for the Panama or Suez Canals and had to moor at offshore oil rigs.
Suggested By: ranwhenparked, Photo Credit: wikimedia
2.) Before we completely enter dream land, we have to stop at Project Habakkuk, the 2,000 foot long (609 meters) and two-million ton proposed aircraft carrier conceived by the British during WWII. It was to be made out of a mixture of water and wood pulp frozen together into "pykrete." Sadly, the giant floating ice island/ship never got past a 60 foot prototype.
Suggested By: , Photo Credit: umbry101
1.) The Freedom Ship was thought up in the '90s and was supposed to be 1,371 meters long, weighing 2.7 million tons. The top was an airport that could land a 737. No shipbuilding facility in the world is large enough to even think about building something this big.
Suggested By: JAy Lutz, Photo Credit: FreedomShip.com