Talk:List of longest ships/Archive 1

Archive 1

January 2006

Length is a pretty bad measurement of how large something is. I think ranking by mass would be more appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lengis (talk • contribs) 20:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Gross tonnage seems to be the "industry standard", but media often list ships by longest, so it satisfies the curiosity of some. --Dhartung | Talk 03:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Still, shouldn't this article be called "List of the world's longest ships"? It could be complemented by a "List of the world's largest ships" where we measure by gross tonnage and link to the longest ships for people who want to see it that way. TomTheHand 14:17, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Please note: The Shell vessel Prelude measures 488 m long and 74 m wide and may well be the largest vessel ever built. ref:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG. It is a stationary vessel that processes gas into liquefied natural gas. This process is FLNG. --DavoLondon (talk) 16:06, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Incomplete

I removed this self-reference, which belongs here on Talk:

It appears to be erroneous, as there are a number of freighters on the Great Lakes that are 1,000' long; length is an imperfect measure of a ship's size, regardless.

So obviously there are ships out there that should be here, let's find 'em! --Dhartung | Talk 03:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

¿ DONDE ESTAN LOS NAVIOS DE LA COSTA CROCIERE ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.21.147.162 (talk) 14:29, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

There are 13 "footers" that carry bulk freight (I.E. taconite ore, coal, grain, salt, etc) on the great lakes and one tug/barge combo

Bulk freighters (self unloaders) - American Integrity (1000 ft × 105 ft) - American Spirit (1004 ft × 105 ft) - American Century (1000 ft × 105 ft) - Edgar B. Speer (1004 ft × 105 ft) - Edwin H. Gott (1004 ft × 105 ft) Most powerful engines on the Great Lakes. - James R. Barker (1004 ft × 105 ft) 1st standard construction 1000-footer - Mesabi Miner (1004 ft × 105 ft) - Paul R. Tregurtha (1013 ft 6 in × 105 ft) Largest vessel on Great Lakes - Stewart J. Cort (1000 ft × 105 ft) First 1000 ft boat on the Lakes - Burns Harbor (1000 ft × 105 ft) - Indiana Harbor (1000 ft × 105 ft) - Walter J. McCarthy Jr. (1000 ft × 105 ft) Highest cargo capacity (78,850 long tons)

Tug/barge combination (ITB) - Presque Isle (1000 ft × 104 ft 7 in) Only 1000-foot tug/barge unit — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.76.0.1 (talk) 00:20, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Largest Ship?

Ok should it be based on gross tonnage rather than length?

As this page measures largeness only by length it should be relabeled as sugested above. To measure largeness by gross tonnage may make sense for commercial vessels, but displacement is how naval vessels are measured. And it is not easy to find displacement figures for passenger ships, and gross tonnage figures for warships may be virtually impossible to come by (at least enough of them sufficient to compile a meaningful comparative list). Kablammo 19:15, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Aircraft carriers

There may be some confusion among the aircraft carriers - over whether to use overall length or waterline length. Not all articles supply both numbers and the ones that don't do not specify which figure they are giving. Rmhermen 20:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Listing in sections

When I first looked at this list late last year it was just one list of the longest ships. Now it's in sections - Military, Cargo, Passenger. I'd prefer the one list so I can easily see what ranking the Berge Stahl (or any other ship) is in 'The world longest ships'. Isn't one of the main points of this page to see the ranking of the longest ships - if needed have another page/list of the longest Military ships / cargo ships / passenger ships on other pages. I realise that it may have been split because of the tonnage issue but why not have another list of the world's largest ships? Any others have thoughts? I also acknowledge the work done by user 88.112.30.155. Well done! - Ctbolt 03:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Tonnage vs. Displacement

So some of these sections are listed by tonnage and some are by displacement. These are definitely not the same thing so we should make sure they are not being used interchangeably. We should get them sorted out and all in the same units. -Bonus Onus (talk) 18:38, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the "Tonnage" column (ex-"Displacement") should be separated to GT and DWT. Displacement data is generally not available, but the first two should be quite easy to find for every ship. Tupsumato (talk) 08:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I think the columns should be split and made sortable based on what the viewer wants to search by. Keeping the two together creates confusion. -greg — Preceding unsigned comment added by Greg787 (talk • contribs) 21:10, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed that the tonnage column, which contains both DWT and GT, is sortable. I hope no-one uses it to put the ship in some random order... Tupsumato (talk) 04:40, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Deadweight vs. Displacement

The table has a comment labelled Disp, but the figures given are (from my quick review of the top few entries) sometime actually DWT and sometimes displacement. These are not the same thing. For example, the table gives Knock Nevis's displacement as 564k but that is its DWT and its displacement is more like 647k. Similarly for the Batillus class. Emma Maersk may be correct (certainly the figure given is not the vessels dwt, so it may well be its disp.) The TI Oceania figure is again actually the DWT and not displacement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.193.196.122 (talk) 08:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

The Overall and Cargo ships listings should have an unsortable Size field rather than Displacement or Tonnage respectively. Neither of the present fields are accurate, as stated above. The new fields should be filled with the number and what it represents, i.e., GT, DWT, etc. The new fields should not be sortable as there is no real comparision between the different measures. Kablammo (talk) 12:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

List markup

The first of the currently four lists uses different markup than the other. I just started editing the others to use the "sortable wikitable" feature, but came across special markup used to add some empty rows (the "military" list uses them after every row, the others seem to do some grouping (though not by class)). I did not like to remove them without knowing their purpose, so I refrained from editing the page at all. Maybe someone can explain the purpose? Tierlieb (talk) 08:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Length Column Pretty Print

I know this probably touches on a half a million charts, wiki-wide, but may I suggest doing away with the / between the meters and feet lengths and just forcing a carriage return? Most wrap anyway, and the / looks bad, and those that only partly wrap look even worse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.102.11.99 (talk) 18:54, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

dark grey

why are some of the entries in the tables, darker grey?--86.161.55.33 (talk) 21:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Ships that are in service are presented with a slightly different-coloured background. Or at least most of them — this list needs some attention. Tupsumato (talk) 04:41, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

New biggest bulker

Since May 2011 Vale Brasil is the biggest bulker (see [1] and some comments in net). Ciacho5 (talk) 14:33, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Added to the list. Tupsumato (talk) 04:34, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Added the sister ship Vale China and the four new Berge bulkers as well. Tupsumato (talk) 08:45, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

"Supertanker" and other improvement proposals

It seems that all big crude oil tankers in the article have been labeled "supertankers". According to the oil tanker article "supertanker is an informal term used to describe the largest tankers". I'd say the correct type would be either "crude oil tanker" or "oil tanker", so it would be in line with the other ship types (container ships, cruise ships etc.). Tupsumato (talk) 04:27, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

As discussed before, I suggest adding separate fields for GT and DWT. The displacement is often not known, so perhaps we could drop that? Also, having "Years in operation" or something along those lines could be useful. Tupsumato (talk) 08:46, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, perhaps we should draw a line for each type of ship, e.g. 350 metres (1,148 ft) or more for oil tankers and container ships, 300 metres (984 ft) or more for passenger ships and a bit less for other ships — we could list the longest ships of certain type even though they were not that long in comparison to oil tankers. Tupsumato (talk) 08:51, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

As for the ship names, instead of the first, the last or, in some cases, the best-known name we could give all names with years in parenthesis, for example First name (1975–1988), separated with <br />. It should be quite easy to find the information for most ships as there are websites dedicated e.g. for supertankers. Tupsumato (talk) 09:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup

I decided to clean up the article quite a lot as it had multiple issues. Discussion on project talk page. Tupsumato (talk) 20:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

table mistake

I do not know how to edit this table to correct it, but when I view the table in descending length TI Oceania is misplaced, and has DWT in the length column and length in the DWT column. You can see what I mean here: http://omploader.org/vY3c2ZQ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.111.47.103 (talk) 05:15, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Should work now. Tupsumato (talk) 05:19, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Four Batillus class ULCCs

The 4 tankers of this class (Batillus, Bellamya, Pierre Guillaumat, Prairial) were all built on the same hull; there is no evidence that any one ship was larger in principal dimensions than another in the class. The one or two centimeter differences are errors involved in converting one set of units to other units--i.e.,feet to meters. Mytg8 (talk) 05:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

If you have a suitable source, feel free to do the necessary changes. Tupsumato (talk) 09:48, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Any introduction of a major registry--e.g. LLoyd's Register of Ships--stated that fact. Ships, at least of that time, were not measured to that accuracy. Their software calculated conversions to two decimal places, but Lloyd's did not guarantee that accuracy. It's interesting that one of the class probably was larger or smaller than the others, but which ship is impossible to know. Visser's is a good web page, but has some errors, and surely wouldn't know. Mytg8 (talk) 20:56, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Would like to suggest that the 4 tankers of this class be grouped together as a single row in this table, labeled "Batillus class (4 ships)" - similar to the existing table entries "Maersk Triple E class (20 ships)" and "TI class (4 ships)". The 4 Batillus ships are all the same length, which is the title of this article, so it should be reasonable to have one entry. Could show the variation of DWT and GT measures by entering "553,661 - < br > 555,051" and "273,550 - < br > 274,837" under those columns. (could drop the < br >). The text "Pierre Guillaumat was the largest of the four Batillus-class ships" then completes the entry by stating which one of the four was the actual largest.

This is a big enough change that I'd like some feedback first. Jmg38 (talk) 02:16, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm okay with this because I recall seeing the term "Batillus class" used elsewhere and there's a separate article for them as well. Thus, I don't have anything against you carrying out that edit. Furthermore, as was proposed below, we could drop the tonnage measurements from this list as we are only concerned about the length of the vessels. Still, I would like to keep a mention about Pierre Guillaumat being the largest of the four.

However, with the other sister ships in the table (Esso Atlantic and Esso Pacific), I would prefer to keep them separate because I have never seen anyone talking about "Esso Atlantic class" and we shouldn't invent new classes just out of convenience. If you can find a reliable source that groups the two supertankers into a "class" (that does not always happen with civilian ships), then it's ok.

Tupsumato (talk) 05:56, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. Agree on the Esso ships. Agree on keeping the Pierre Guillaumat info - complete with wikilink. Don't see any harm in keeping the DWT and GT columns, as long as the length column is first. Will wait a day or two in case there are any other editor's comments. Jmg38 (talk) 15:55, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Regarding recent reverts

I reverted some of the edits by User:Mindbuilder:

• In my opinion, there is no need to "dumb down" the article by adding explanation to every term, neither in the articled body nor in the table headings. The technical terms have been linked to relevant articles for those who are not familiar with them. Tupsumato (talk) 10:18, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy is that articles should be writen primarily for an average person, not for persons highly knowlegable in the field. I'm pretty sure the average person, and probably very few people, know what DWT and GT mean. What's worse is that those terms are rather confusing and it is hard to remember what they mean because their names are similar, and the names themselves give little clue as to what they really mean. Gross tonnage is actually a misnomer, because it isn't even a mass measurement, and it doesn't include the full gross, because it excludes the shipping containers. And Deadweight tonnage? What makes an object deadweight rather than liveweight? An anchor seems like deadweight to me, but wouldn't be included in deadweight. Passengers don't seem like deadweight to me, but they WOULD be counted as deadweight. So normal people like me not only need to be able to read the articles that define those terms, it is useful to have a reminder what the terms mean, because even after you learn what they mean, they're easy to get mixed up. There are lots of times on Wikipedia where we put helpful little reminders in articles instead of making readers memorize confusing definitions from other articles. I think it is most important to have the short description of the terms in the table heading for quick reminders as one examines the table, but I could live with a description just before the table.

It is questionable whether GT should be mentioned or have a table entry here at all. Gross tonnage isn't even a real measurement. It's an imaginary value and has an arbitrary scaling factor with no physical basis. It is a basically meaningless regulatory technicality. It should only be of interest to people who care about technical regulations of ships. I suppose that since it is a continuously increasing function of volume, it can be used for ranking based loosely on internal volume. But it is misleading since a ship of twice the volume will have something other than twice the gross tonnage. Mindbuilder (talk) 17:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

While I still disagree with describing DWT as "≈ cargo mass", I recognize that you do have a point here. Since we are talking about the list of world's longest ships, perhaps we should drop both DWT and GT from this list? After all, in this Wikipedia article it's only the size that counts, not how efficiently you utilize it. Thus, it should be the only size measurement given in the table. Tupsumato (talk) 19:01, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

• Furthermore, I disagree with removing text about Pierre Guillaumat being the largest ship ever laid down. Seawise Giant went through jumboisation after delivery, making the Batillus-class supertankers the largest/longest/heaviest/whatever ships ever to be built as such from the beginning. I revised the text slightly. Tupsumato (talk) 10:18, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Again, Wikipedia policy is to write for the person of average knowledge. And again I don't think the average person even knows what it means to say that it was the largest ship ever "laid down". If that just means that it was the largest ship ever as originally constructed, then that should just be stated in plain language that the average person will understand without explanation. And although I suppose most can guess or check the reference, the term Jumboization is also a little unclear. Plain language like "enlarged" would be better.

But I don't think that fact that it was the largest as originally constructed is even worth wasting space in this article, and especially when trying to cram that factoid into the small table box. It seems to me that virtually nobody will care what was the largest ship as originally constructed. What's important is what was the largest ship eventually. The path that got it there is almost meaningless. That fact would be ok in the full article about the ship, but not in the tiny table box of a summary list. Mindbuilder (talk) 17:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I admit there's preciously little space for additional details especially if you're reading the article on your smartphone (even if we drop the tonnage measurements as I proposed above), but I think this kind of information makes it a bit more interesting to an average reader than just giving out raw numbers as it puts the two tankers in kind of separate categories. Just like all the other additional information that has been included in the table in addition to the length of the vessel. While we could do just with a list of names and lengths, it wouldn't make a very good article...

Also, I would be careful with remarks like "virtually nobody will care" in Wikipedia. It's not for you to decide. Tupsumato (talk) 19:01, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

• Finally, I disagree with your calculations regarding the above-deck cargo volume of the Maersk Triple E class container ships. I have never seen anyone making this kind of calculations in other context, so we should not introduce new ways of measuring ships. Otherwise, someone could come and claim that for some heavy lift carrier only the sky is the limit when it comes to above-deck cargo capacity. Thus, I have removed the passage. This list is mainly about the length of the vessel, so even comparing ships of the same type can be seen as stretching it a bit. We definitely should not make comparisons between different types of ships. Tupsumato (talk) 10:18, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

I think I have seen mention of cargo volume in comparison of ships, though it is clearly not often mentioned. Certainly I have seen the worlds largest buildings ranked by volume on the History Channel. I recently read a Wired article about a Maersk Triple E ship that declared it the biggest in the world. It of course qualifies by length for ships currently in service, but I realized that it also qualifies by cargo volume. It seems like a legitimate argument can be made that that qualifies it as largest in at least two meaningfull senses, and may in fact be more meaningful than gross tonnage, which is also a volume measurement. It is true that it would be very hard to make a meaningful comparison of cargo volume between ships that have open cargo decks and undefined cargo of indefinite volume, but container vessels can carry only a limited number of containers of a specific volume. That is a finite and fairly well defined volume to make size comparisons. What's more, nothing else is close to the Maersk Triple E in finite cargo volume, not even the Seawise Giant, so there is not a lot of room for debate about the leader in that measurement (other than undefined open deck ships of course, but they're not finite volume). But even if you wanted to compare open deck ships, I'd say go for it, that would be interesting. I see no reason not to just because it would be tricky and indefinite. Deck area might be more meaningful in that context though. Though of course cargo can overhang the deck. The cargo volume of the Maersk and the big tankers is information already available on Wikipedia (at least with a simple multiplication), and it is interesting, so I see no reason not to make mention of it. I think readers will find it interesting. And it is really what they would want that should make our decision.

I don't see a problem at all in comparing different types of ships. It is true that in some sense it is comparing things that are not comparable in some ways, but in other senses they are comparable. Indeed, the Seawise Giant article compares, legitimately I think, things as massively different as lighter than air dirigibles and skyscrapers. I find such comparisons very interesting, and I expect many other readers do as well. Mindbuilder (talk) 17:37, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should stick to previously established methods of measuring ships and not invent new ones. While the method you have described makes some sense, it is still largely based on interpreting and comparing the available data (GT, DWT, number of containers) in a new and unconventional way. Furthermore, do we have detailed data about the actual cargo capacity (tank/hold volume, deadweight tonnage distribution) or the vessels in question? After all, gross tonnage and deadweight tonnage are not direct measurements.

In addition, I would refrain from mixing the container capacity to this article. What about container ships that have greater actual or theoretical TEU capacity than the Triple E class, but are shorter? What about the habit of big shipping companies of not making the exact figures public?

My proposal: drop the cargo capacity comparisons and concentrate on length-related issues. Tupsumato (talk) 19:01, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

• I also added some non-breaking spaces inside the ship names.

Anyway, I'm open to discussion regarding the above items.

Tupsumato (talk) 10:18, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Prelude FLNG

Prelude is a floating LNG plant without independent propulsion. It is not a ship and thus does not belong to the list of world's longest ships. Tupsumato (talk) 13:14, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

I am very keen to bring our articles in line with WP:V. Since some sources do actually call it a ship, and other sources say that its status as a ship is debatable, we shouldn't state ex cathedra that it's not a ship and must never appear on a list of ships, no matter how much ire is aroused by slight differences between abstract categories of vessels.

Feel free to add a footnote or some clarifying text, though. bobrayner (talk) 13:04, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Any comment, Tupsumato? bobrayner (talk) 13:39, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Holy necropost, Batman! Anyway, this Shell publication specifically states "...but it is a fixed facility, with no means of propulsion" despite having thrusters for station keeping. Furthermore, IHS Sea-web database specifies the vessel as "Non Propelled" . Thus, it is not a ship and does not belong to this list. Tupsumato (talk) 21:39, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Regarding length of certain ships

There is no way a news article can be considered more reliable than the database entry of the ship's classification society. Tupsumato (talk) 10:13, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I seem to have notified the user in question, User:Yavorpenchev, about similar edits concerning the length of Maersk Triple E class in May 2014. Tupsumato (talk) 11:38, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Which ships to include

The List of world's longest ships includes "...the current record-holders, either as individual ships or ship classes, of each major ship type as well as longer vessels that have been scrapped." Thus, there is no need to add ships that are shorter than the longest ship of each class. Such vessels can be added to a separate list, for example List of largest container ships. Tupsumato (talk) 07:03, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I have reverted 192.43.227.18's edits now several times. As per above, the list of world's longest ships includes the following vessels:

- current record-holders, either as individual ships or ship classes; and

- longer vessels [than those currently in service] that have been scrapped.

As of 2015, there are dozens of container vessels with length overall exceeding 390 metres (1,280 ft), including Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller. However, there is no need to list them all in the list of the longest ships because there is another list (linked above) where they can be and in fact are already listed. Furthermore, now that we seem to be engaged in a kind of edit war, I kindly ask 192.43.227.18 discuss the issue before adding the ship yet again into the list of the world's longest ship where it does not belong anymore. Tupsumato (talk) 16:46, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

So, Tupsumato, are you also going to delete the other entries under 'Oil tanker', or are you only going to keep the longest/largest oil tanker? If you dont remove them, that is double standards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.43.227.18 (talk) 17:10, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Which part of "longer vessels [than those currently in service] that have been scrapped" do you not understand? As of 2015, there have been seven ships that were longer than the TI class oil tankers and they have been included in the list. However, there is no need to include vessels that are shorter than the current record-holders, for there are too many. Tupsumato (talk) 19:03, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Which part of "The list includes the current record-holders, either as individual ships or ship classes, of each major ship type as well as longer vessels that have been scrapped" dont you understand.. And besides, people can just include one 'shorter' than the current record holder ship, i.e., a runner-up. I see absolutely no harm in doing that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.43.227.18 (talk) 21:07, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I do not get your point. The sentence clearly states which ships to include in the list: either the ship is the longest ship of its type or it is longer than the current record-holder but has been scrapped. The latter only applies to seven oil tankers. If someone built a longer oil tanker than Seawise Giant, those ships would be removed according to the current definition of the list. Also, note that the list only includes ships and not floating structures in general (thus, excluding e.g. Prelude FLNG).

Sure, someone could ask why we couldn't include runner-ups and why not even, say, the ten longest ships of each type. That's what the list used to be — see for example this old version. However, we have separate listings for ship types (container ships, cruise ships) as well as e.g. list of world's largest ships by gross tonnage, so the list of the longest ships was trimmed down to be precise: it lists the world's longest ships by type and includes both the current record-holders as well as those ships that no longer exist but were longer than what is currently the longest ship in the world. With such definition, the length of the list will remain limited in the future as well and will not bloat into "list of ships that are just very long". Of course, we could include other ship types as well, but IMHO it's pretty unreasonable to include, say, the longest tugboat in the world when it's about 400 metres shorter than the longest ship by any definition....

Tupsumato (talk) 05:14, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Some sources call Prelude FLNG a ship; sooner or later, content on wikipedia will be determined by sources rather than your personal feelings about classes of vessels. bobrayner (talk) 13:38, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Equasis also classifies her as "Offshore Processing Ship" and she does in fact have an IMO number. Of course, there are also sources that emphasize how she's more a floating offshore facility than a ship and in fact the owners prefer not to call Prelude a ship. Anyway, I am aware that sooner or later — latest at the time when the ship vessel facility is completed — we are going to have to decide for good whether or not to include the FLNG plant to the list of the world's longest ships. Considering that passing the title of the world's longest ship to something like Prelude may be somewhat controversial among ship enthusiasts, I would prefer to bring the issue to the attention of the whole project in order to have more opinions.

Furthermore, I'm also open to discussion regarding this list in general. I admit I might have gone a bit overboard with some of the remarks above and apologize if I have offended someone. Tupsumato (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

As for sources, in one reference in the article, the owners call the Prelude an "offshore facility", and the other says it is not a ship or a boat. Where is the reliable source [[2]] that states the barge to be a ship? Chasrob (talk) 07:00, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Reverts of user ‎"Mkmillenium"

There are two edits that I have reverted from User:‎Mkmillenium:

• Removal of "(planned)" from the "In service" year range of Prelude FLNG. In my opinion, if the vessel has not entered service yet, it has a planned entry-to-service date and not a set one. Anything can happen and it is not unheard of that the delivery of a vessel is delayed.
• Rewording of the "Notes" to reflect the fact that even the owners of Prelude do not refer to it as a ship. Furthermore, I do not accept Capitalization Of Each Word In A Sentence in a Wikipedia article. Finally, Tokyo Bay's "Megafloat" was considerably larger than Prelude, which means that while Prelude can be referred to as the largest ship, it is not the largest floating man-made object even though many media sources seem to say so.

I hope User:Mkmillennium would also participate in the discussion before engaging in or continuing an edit war. Tupsumato (talk) 06:27, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

After User:Mkmillenium removed the above post, I saw it necessary to invite people from WP:SHIPS to solve the conflict. The invitation to discuss the issue on this talk page can be found here. Tupsumato (talk) 16:05, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Include Titanic?

What about adding the RMS Titanic (and Olympic) to this list? They would be the last item in the table, just 9/10ths of a meter shorter than the Iowa class battleships. Not a particularly long ship now, but one of the longest 100+ years ago. And very well-known to people, so it might give readers an idea of the sizes involved here. T bonham (talk) 09:39, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Titanic wasn't particularly big or special even at that time: she was exceeded in length already in the year following her demise. It's true that quite many people are familiar with the lost liner, but how many of them actually realize how big (or small) she actually was? In my opinion, we don't need to add Titanic as a yardstick to every possible nautical article. Tupsumato (talk) 12:49, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria and splitting the list by ship type

The current inclusion criteria is for each ship type the current largest ship(or class of ships). the list also includes previous record holders (larger ships that no longer operate). I have a few questions about this.

First, what ship types to include. According the the current criteria the list should also contain the longest sailing vessel, longest yacht, etc.

Second, I want to propose to split this list into multiple Subsections or Tables where each subsection has a short list of the longest ships of its type. Like the 5 longest oil tankers. 5 longest cruise ships. 5 longest warships. I fear the current table gives a false sense of scale. Ships of different types are not really comparable. The Iowa class battleships are the longest (of their type) but there are literally more than 1000(!) ships that are longer that the Iowa class ships. It would be better instead to be able to compare it to other warships. This way the column with comments can also be removed from the table as it can be replaced by a description above the table. This makes the tables more compact an easier to read (especially on mobile devices). This all does not really change the current inclusion criteria.

KiaaTiX (talk) 14:57, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't think we should try to include every possible ship type in existence. For example, the longest tugboat is not a particularly long ship and tugboats in general are characterized by other properties. However, I don't claim the latter note does not also apply to other ships (e.g. container ships — TEU capacity, bulk carriers — deadweight tonnage, passenger ships — passenger capacity). Yet, I think there should be some "lower limit" for ships to be included in the article which lists ships by length. While encyclopedic, the article also needs to be "interesting". Tupsumato (talk) 20:45, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I fully agree with you on the inclusion criteria. I also like the idea of different ship properties for different ship types. A lower bound for ship type inclusion could be set at 270m for the longest ship of its type. It will still fit the Iowa class (and thus battleships). The list will then include all major cargo ship types (excluding roll-on/roll-of ships), large cruise ships and some special ships mainly used in the offshore industry (pioneering spirit and dockwise vanguard). I dont think it should be any lower than this.

KiaaTiX (talk) 19:12, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

As for your second proposal, it sounds interesting and worth looking for. In my opinion, we should include ship type specific tables about a small number of ships that are generally "long" (namely, the ship types currently featured in the article) and then perhaps have a "miscellaneous ship types" table for particularly long ships of their type (e.g. Pioneering Spirit, which does not have an equal among extant ships). While the current article lists DWT and GT for all ships, we could include type-specific measurements (see previous paragraphs) in their place as e.g. DWT is not very relevant for passenger ships. We should decide what ships to include and how to group them (e.g. naval ships under one table instead of splitting them between aircraft carriers and other combatants, and grouping all passenger ships under one title regardless of whether they are liners or cruise ships). I also support your idea of converting the "notes" to a general description about the ships above the table.

However, I propose we discuss this major revision of the article here first (and wait for other comments as well). Once we are set on what we want to include, I can help with looking up for the ships as I have access to e.g. IHS Sea-web.

Tupsumato (talk) 20:45, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I also agree with you here. As for grouping together cruise ships and liners into a single passenger ship list. Ocean liners are seemingly more and more a thing of the past and aparrently the Queen Mary 2 is the only one in service right now. It is all cruise ships now. So it would make sense to put them in a single section with all passenger ships.

However, I don't think it is a good idea to group all warships together. Aircraft carriers are quite different to battleships. Both in looks and purpose. So it might be nice to have distiction between them. In my opinion they should at least both be mentioned.

As for the following ship types: Oil tanker, Bulk carrier, container ship, cruise ship/cruise liner. These ship types are probably easiest to split off from the main table of ships. The seem to be relatively long compared to other types and would dominate the top of the list if it would include all ships. The rest of the current table could for now remain unchanged. Thus it would then only contain LNG carrier, Crane vessel, warship.

KiaaTiX (talk) 19:12, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Could you make a draft version in your namespace (e.g. User:KiaaTiX/Longest ships draft)? I think it's easier to continue discussion when we have something concrete, and once we are happy with the result, we can just copy it to the "live" version. Tupsumato (talk) 19:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

A bit late but I made a draft at User:KiaaTiX/Longest ships draft. The list of ships is obviously not complete and is lacking sources, but it more or less shows the general idea. Each ship class own table with possibly some general description. We can continue the discussion on that page about what is best to add. Finalize what ship types to include and if to add any aditional info for a specific ship type like number of passengers for a cruise ship. Might be interesting for the reader but is already mentioned on the largest cruise ships page. Also if we need to actually incude longest warship or only link to the dedicated page with longest naval ships? KiaaTiX (talk) 21:18, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Looks good. I'll have to look into it in more detail sometime later. However, I would propose having just one column for length with {{convert}} for m→ft conversion because the ships should sort in the same order regardless of length. Furthermore, while some ships belong to a certain class (e.g. Valemax, Oasis), we could mention individual ships in the same way as with Esso Atlantic and Esso Pacific in case of, for example, those recent container ships that are of the same design but do not belong to a recognized class or standard design. This information can be obtained from Sea-web that lists "sister ships". Also, I think we should have just one "size descriptor" in addition to length, e.g. DWT for tankers and bulk carriers and GT for cruise ships. I don't think GT is very relevant for tankers, for example, just like DWT is not for cruise ships. Whether or not to include TEU capacity, I'm not sure - we are talking about absolute vessel size here, not the number of cargo units (passengers) that fits in. That's information better suited for list of largest container ships, list of largest cruise ships etc. The idea of having hatnotes in each section to dedicated list (if one exists) about that ship type is good. Tupsumato (talk) 11:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty much done with the draft. If a ship class has a dedicated wikipedia page then a link is given to that page, otherwise all ships of a class are listed. Made the inclusion criteria any ship type for which there exists at least 1 ship with length longer than 300m. This will probably work for now and can always be changed later.

Since you have easy access to ship data, could you verify/add a source for the length of the 2 disney cruise ships and the 6 MOL container ships? And if so, could you also check length of CMA CGM Antoine de Saint Exupery and COSCO Shipping Aries? I am not sure if they are exactly 400 meters long. If that is done I think the draft is can be copied to this page. KiaaTiX (talk) 01:54, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll try to do this tonight or this weekend. I'm sorry for the delay — it's been a busy week. I can also check the other ship types. Is it ok that I made the edits to the draft in your namespace? I may have some other tweaks as well.

300 metres (1,000 ft) is probably a good inclusion criteria for a ship type together with a limited number of examples from the "top end" of the list. I can pull out data sets for each ship type sorted by length and check if some belong to a standard design series that can be grouped together. I'll also try to cite things from public sources (class society databases).

Tupsumato (talk) 08:17, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Of course not, feel free to edit the draft however you like. KiaaTiX (talk) 14:52, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Did some work on the list — added ships and references, and trimmed down unnecessary text. I think we should list the five longest naval ships (or, to be more precise, four longest aircraft carriers + Iowa class). Then it's pretty much done. Extensive Sea-web search didn't turn out any ships we don't already have in the list. I also think it's a good idea not to include ships (e.g. Global class cruise ships) before they are at least launched. Tupsumato (talk) 16:16, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I think the draft is pretty much finished. For completeness (and consistency) it would be good to include some more naval ships. However it would just be an exact copy of the top of the longest warship list. This is not really the case with other existing lists like the list of largest cruise ships is based on gross tonnage and the list of container ships on nominal TEU capacity. I had my doubts about including the current listed warships in the first place. But eventually decided on having only the largest aircraft carrier and battleship on this list to serve as examples for longest of their class. A reader can then visit the dedicated naval ship page if he/she want to know more.

I agree on not listing ships that have not been built yet. So it is either changing the number of ships in a class (I prefer this) of somehow introducing a second number for ships actually built (more complete information, but not sure how this can be included it in a clear way).

Anyway, as the list now is up to date with ships, I think it can be copied to here. It looks good and I don't expect there will be any major changes made to the draft. Small changes can be made on this page. KiaaTiX (talk) 21:05, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps we could include the naval ships under "others"? Having a dedicated list for two vessels seems a bit wasteful. As for the list in general, I'm fine with going live with the version in your namespace. If something comes up, we can just edit the list. I'll try to find time(/motivation) to update the sketch of the longest ships as well. Tupsumato (talk) 21:15, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Copied the draft to this page. Moved the naval ships to the other ships category. KiaaTiX (talk) 21:56, 4 February 2018 (UTC)