Pioneering Spirit

Pioneering Spirit is the category-bender of this entire site. By gross tonnage — the measure of internal volume — she is the largest ship ever built, half again the size of the biggest cruise ship. At 123.75 metres she is by far the widest. And she does not carry cargo at all.

She is a tool: a twin-hulled giant whose bows straddle an oil platform through a 122-by-59-metre slot, grip the topsides with hydraulic beams, and lift the entire structure — accommodation block, drilling gear, the lot — in one motion measured in seconds. Her 2017 removal of the 24,200-tonne Brent Delta topsides remains the heaviest lift ever performed at sea; decommissioning jobs that once took offshore crews years of cutting now take her an afternoon.

Built by DSME for the Swiss-Dutch contractor Allseas, she was nearly named Pieter Schelte until public outcry over the namesake's wartime record forced a change — the rare ship renamed by public opinion. Between platform jobs she lays pipe, including the deepest large-diameter pipelines ever installed.