World's Biggest Ship (For Now) Launched

A ship longer than four football pitches in length docked recently in Felixtowe. The CSCL Globe, registered in Shanghai, is currently the largest ship ever built:

The Globe is more than 400m long,  56.8m wide and 73m high, its gross tonnage is 186,000, or about the same as 14,500 buses. It can carry 19,100 standard 20ft containers, enough to stretch for 72 miles.

But its reign as the world's largest ship is about to be ended already. The Oscar built by Daewoo in South Korea, sccheduled for launch shortly, will be able to carry 19,224 containers, or 124 more than the Globe. The Oscar will be 395.4m long, 30.3m deep and 59m in breadth with a gross tonnage 193,000 tons.

To put this in perspective, the Titanic was 46,328 tons and 269m long, so it was a quarter of the Oscar's weight and two thirds its length!