==============
You’re gonna
need a
bigger boat
If you ever find yourself quoting Chief Brody’s
famous line from Jaws, you should head to
Ulsan Shipyard in South Korea.
Owned and operated by Hyundai Heavy
Industries, the 1,780-acre site in Mipo Bay is
the largest ship-building facility in the world,
capable of turning out 70 new ships each year.
Not just any ships, mind you – the biggest
oceangoing vessels on the planet, including
gargantuan container ships and tankers for
liquefied natural gas.
Despite being taken from high above, this
shot still isn’t big enough to completely frame
one of Ulsan’s 10 dry docks, the biggest of
which measures a staggering 672 x 92 x
12m. Spanning those docks are nine aptly
named Goliath gantry cranes, two of which
can be seen disappearing out of the top and
bottom left of this image. The cranes, which
stand 117m tall and 210m wide – big enough
to straddle not just a football pitch but the
entire Emirates stadium – are used to lift vast
sections of the boats’ hulls into position so
they can be welded together.
Robots do most of the welding at Ulsan
simply because they can weld faster and more
accurately than their human counterparts.
Nevertheless, every weld has to be checked
on a microscopic scale to ensure its integrity
as even the slightest fault can lead to an
explosive disaster when you’re transporting
vast quantities of gas or oil.PHOTO: GETTY