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www.marinelink.com 39 T he December edition is the traditional “Great Ships” edition of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News, and in 2014 we present 17 ships that cumulatively constitutes one of the strongest groups ever. If there were but two words allowed to describe the group of 17 (actually, 18 if you count the “Great Con- cept” from Lindenau on page 56), those two words would be “Big” and “Clean.” Build Big To put it simply, ships are getting bigger, and here we feature two of the biggest ever in Pieter Schelte, Allsea’s new decommissioning ves- sel and PLSV on page 42. This unique vessel is mammoth, at 1,253 ft. (382m) long and 407 ft. (124 m) wide and purpose designed for the removal of offshore rigs. CSCL Globe is the world’s new title holder of “World’s Largest Containership,” weighing in at 1,312 ft. (400 m) long, 187,541 gt and capable of carring 19,000 TEU. The boxship business in particular has been stoking the fi res of the build big boom, as the economy of scale and effi ciency of the mammoth ships are re- quired to stay competitive in today global containershipping business. Run Clean While ships and boats grow larger, they also are much cleaner by comparison. Case in point is the push toward hybrid propulsion solu- tions as seen in Semper Fi (p. 47), Zero Cat 120 (p. 53), and ‘LNG as Fuel’ as seen on Harvey Energy (p. 45) and the pair of TOTE contain- ership newbuilds, as profi led not in the Great Ships section but on p. 24 where we profi le the work of Kevin Graney and his colleagues at NASSCO. The fi rst LNG-fuelled TOTE containership is due for deliv- ery in the Spring of 2015, so watch this space next year for a report on that ship in Great Ships of 2015. The World’s Largest; the World’s First; (arguably) the World’s Cleanest ... “Great Ships 2014” has raised the bar high. 2014 QUANTUM OF THE SEAS SEMPER FI CEONA AMAZON HARVEST FROST GAS STAR SIEM MOXIE HOEGH JACKSONVILLE MR #12 (32-41).indd 39 12/2/2014 1:50:53 PM