JAHRE VIKING (KNOCK NEVIS)
Even in an age of superlatives, the Jahre Viking
continued as the ultimate superlative. Jahre
Viking was so huge that she would comfortably swallow up
India's 25,000-tonne aircraft carrier INS Vikrant
in her holds. At 485.46 meters long, she
dwarfed the 424-metre Petronas twin tower of
Malaysia.
Built in 1979 for a
Greek shipping magnate towards the end of the super
tanker boom that followed the oil embargo of 1973, her
original owner went bankrupt even before she put out to
sea. Her builders, the Japanese
conglomerate Sumitomo, then offered her to a Hong Kong owner
Orient Overseas Container Line.
Before taking
delivery, her new owner set an unusual condition.
Already massive at 480,000 tones, he ordered that her
length be increased several more meters to add another
87,000 tones to her load-carrying capacity to make her,
at 564,763 tones, the largest ship to ever be built. After the refit, the ship had a length of 458.45 m
(1,504.1 ft). She had 46 tanks, 31,541 square metres
(339,500 sq ft) of deck space. She was now name Seawise Giant.
The
Seawise Giant sat 24.6 meters in the water, a depth
great enough to deny her entry to most of the world's
major ports, including the Suez and Panama canals.
She drew too much water to pass through the 32-mile-wide
English Channel. The ship's rudder weighed
230 tons, and the propeller 50 tons!
Seawise Giant was damaged and sunk during the 1980–1988
Iran–Iraq War by an Iraqi Air Force attack while
anchored on 14 May 1988 and carrying Iranian crude oil.
The ship was struck by parachute bombs. Fires
ignited aboard the ship and blazed out of control, and
she sank in the shallow waters off the coast of Larak
Island, Iran. She was declared a total loss and
was laid up.
Shortly
after the Iran-Iraq war ended, Norman International--a
Norwegian company-- bought the wreckage of the ship,
raised her and towed her to Singapore for repairs.
She entered service in October 1991 as Happy Giant.
Shortly after the tanker attracted the attention of
Jørgen Jahre who bought her in 1991 for $39 million and
renamed her Jahre Viking.
In 2004, Jahre Viking was purchased by First Olsen
Tankers Pte. Ltd., renamed Knock Nevis, and converted
into a permanently moored storage tanker in the Qatar Al
Shaheen oil field in the Persian Gulf.
Knock
Nevis was renamed Mont, and reflagged to Sierra Leone by
the new owner Amber Development Corporation, for her
final voyage to India in January 2010 where she was
scrapped.
To date,
the Jahre Viking is still the longest ship ever
constructed. She is also the largest by
deadweight. Jahre Viking was featured on the BBC series
Jeremy Clarkson's Extreme Machines. She could
reach up to 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h). It took her 9
km (5 1⁄2 mi) to stop from that speed, and her turning
circle was about 3 km (2 mi).
Jahre Viking's 36-tonne anchor is permanently exhibited
at Hong Kong Maritime Museum.
We build this primarily wood Jahre Viking/Knock
Nevis
model in three sizes:
52" long
x 10" tall x 8.5" wide $5,990
Shipping and insurance in
the contiguous USA included.
Other places: $600 flat rate. This model
in
stock and can be shipped within 5 business days.
36" long
$4,150 Shipping and insurance in
the contiguous USA included.
Other places: $400 flat rate.
24" long
$2,755 Shipping and insurance in
the contiguous USA included.
Other places: $300 flat rate.
A wooden base is
included
36" and 24" models are built per commission only.
We require only a small deposit (not full amount, not
even half) to start the process $500 The
remaining balance won't be due until the model is
completed, in about
5 months.
Not all ship models are
equal, and a lot of them are junk. For those who have
seen some cheap Jahre Viking models out there and felt
the urge to go cheap, be forewarned. Those models are
wrong on many important features. Their hulls are so
wrong that no words can ever describe. One even has
wrong color on it (also on the deck). The railings on
one model are very oversized and look like none ever
existed on any real ships (in fact, those railings are
cut from cockroach mess in tropical regions where
cockroaches are huge.) The all-important funnel is
erroneous on many counts. Any common laborers can
assemble prefab parts and stick a name on the thing to
label it Jahre Viking. It took us a mere couple of
minutes to spot those errors on several different models
that pop up everywhere on the Internet and we did not
want to spend more time looking at the perhaps ugliest
things ever seen. The handsome ship suddenly becomes
displeasing in the hands of the me-too sweatshops.
Learn more about the
Seawise Giant here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawise_Giant
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