The biggest ships ever built — and what it actually takes to operate, survive, or justify something that large.
A tanker so deep in the water it was banned from three of the world's major canals simultaneously and needed nine kilometres to stop. A floating platform the size of five football fields that never moves under its own power. A warship that cost twelve point eight billion dollars and whose weapons elevators didn't work for years after launch. A battleship so fuel-hungry it spent most of the war at anchor, then sailed to its final battle with only enough fuel to get there.
Every record-holding vessel explained — the engineering that made it possible, the economics that made it necessary, and in several cases, the catastrophic end it met anyway.
