Image via Maersk Line
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In fact, the seven longest ships in Wikipedia's fascinating (if potentially incomplete, which is a fascinating proposition on its own, as it's unclear how people might not have records of such enormous objects) list are all oil tankers. A pretty nice portrait of the world's thirst, isn't it?But the Maersk Triple-E slides in at number eight, and to Maersk's credit, all of the top seven ships are as of now out of service, so when the first one sails, it will be the largest ship currently floating on the world's oceans. Plus, the Triple-E models constructed will assuredly be the largest container ships ever constructed, besting the Maersk Emma ships that were first built just seven years ago by 2,500 TEUs of capacity.In fact, thanks to massive shipyards like DSME and increased interest in shipping efficiency, Maersk's vessels have boomed in size in the last few decades, which mirrors much of the industry. Just look at this little graphic from the Triple-E site:That's a lot of growth right there, and it's all driven by the combined weight of our export-driven economy and the admittedly-impressive engineering prowess of modern shipbuilders like DSME. I suppose that's the result of the relentless twin drives of the economy and innovation, which results in massive ships like this. To be fair, those factors also drive the push for efficiency, and it is pretty interesting that Maersk actually designed it to be a slower ship in order to save on fuel costs. Of course, when you're moving millions of pounds of the world's junk around from continent to continent, every penny counts.