Largest Moving Object.... Jahre Viking

From my childhood I had an obsession for large moving things, especially ships and aircraft as their size and capabilities can easily beat that of all other large and moving things. Large ships have always intrigued me, I used to wonder how such large things could move.
From the historic times ships have moved people, civilization and knowledge across lands and territories that could not be imagined even in the wildest of dreams. Men had always wondered what lay beyond the horizon and where the blue sea would take them if they dared to sail its waves. Ships have become carriers of men's dreams from time immemorial and even to this day it is a fact that the world moves on ships. Most of the world's cargo is still moved over ships and ships have grown bigger and ever bigger as the world began to see more economic and scientific development. There is no other way to carry such huge amounts of cargo as ships do today.
If you had been wondering how large, ships could get here you go.......
The largest man-made moving object ever in history is a ship called Jahre Viking also know as Seawise Giant, Happy Giant and Knock Nevis. The ship was built in Japan during the 70s at Oppama Shipyard and was launched in 1979. The ship was built to carry oil(oiltanker), it's capacity is 5,65,000 DWT( Dead Weight Tonnage, which means it can carry 5,65,000 tonnes of oil at a time and is classified as an Ultra Large Crude Carrier(ULCC). It is so large that it can be docked at very few ports in the world, and it cannot pass Suez Canal, Panama Canal or even the English Channel.


The ship is 458.45m long, 68.86m wide and 29.80m. On it's side it is 50 feet longer than Empire State building and four buildings of the size of St.Paul's Basilica can be easily fit into it's tanks !!!
After it's engines are stopped it takes 5.5 miles to come to a halt and to turn, it needs to traverse a circle more than 2 miles wide. Eventhough this ship is so large it has a crew of only 35 men and most of the high ranking officers including the captain of the ship are from India.
Here is an image from the Wikipedia that compares it's size to that of other large man-made structures in the world.



An interesting fact about the ship is that it was sunk off the coast of Iran, after being hit by missiles during the Iran-Iraq war in the Strait of Hormuz. But it was re-floated from the Ocean, which in itself is a gargantuan task, repaired at the Keppel Shipyard in Singapore and started voyages again.



The ship has now been converted into a Floating Storage Unit and is now stationary, permanently anchored at Qatar Al Shaheen oil field in the Persian Gulf.