Esso Atlantic
Esso (Exxon) International · Tanker · Scrapped 2002 · built by Hitachi Zosen
Esso Atlantic and her sister Esso Pacific were the third and fourth of the five ships ever built past 500,000 tonnes deadweight — and the only ones that had full careers.
Derived metrics
Computed by ships.fyi from the core specification — see how we calculate these.
How big is it, really?
The Esso Atlantic's length overall, against things you already know the size of.
The 747-8 bar is the longest airliner ever built — our sibling site aircraft.fyi measures everything that flies the same way.
One Esso Atlantic = 1.51 Titanics · 3.9 football pitches · 16 blue whales · 5.3 Boeing 747-8s laid end to end.
The numbers
| Length overall | 406.57 m |
|---|---|
| Beam | 71.07 m |
| Deadweight | 516,891 t |
| Draft (fully laden) | 25.3 m |
| Delivered | 1977 |
| Fate | Scrapped at Gadani Beach, Pakistan, 2002 |
Put the Esso Atlantic next to something
Last verified: 2026-07-15 · Spot an error? business@luck.fyi
What makes it different
Five ships in history have exceeded half a million tonnes deadweight: Seawise Giant, the French pair Batillus and Pierre Guillaumat, and Exxon's Japanese-built twins Esso Atlantic and Esso Pacific. Only the Exxon pair earned their keep.
The difference was the operator. Exxon owned the cargo, the terminals and the trade, so its giants were never hostage to a spot market that had collapsed — they shuttled the company's own crude for a quarter of a century, riding out the same slump that sent the French ships to the breakers before their tenth birthdays.
Esso Atlantic was finally beached at Gadani in 2002, twenty-five years old — the only proof in this class that the half-million-tonne tanker could work as a business, given a business that needed it.
The Esso Atlantic line
Two sisters
Who operates the Esso Atlantic
No current operator — this ship's sailing days are over. The operators of record are below.