Narrator: This is no ordinary ship.
Man: It's one of the biggest in the world.
Narrator: To carry some of the largest sea cargos ever,
it does what most ships are designed to avoid at all costs.
Man: It's really amazing to see something this big
immerse itself almost completely under water
and then come up again, carrying something huge.
Man: It's a bit of a game changer.
It's like kind of a combo cargo ship and submarine.
Narrator: The gpo amethyst
is one of a prestigious superclass of ships
known as semi-submersible heavy lifters.
Man: To be a captain on this vessel
is actually a great honor.
Narrator: From the outside,
it's impossible to see the feats of engineering
that give the amethyst its incredible capability.
Man: So, a lot of factors can go wrong,
and we should be ready for any of these.
Narrator: The only way to reveal its secrets
is to take this supership apart
and uncover what's going on inside.
♪ ♪
today, the amethyst is en route to the gulf of mexico,
where it will attempt to load up
two giant decommissioned oil rigs bound for oman.
At the helm is captain evgeniy nikityuk,
who's been in the ocean-going heavy-lifting business
for 11 years.
Evgeniy nikityuk: Thousand ten.
Man on radio: London star, london star...
Narrator: The next few days will see his ship tested
not only by some of the biggest cargo on the seas,
but also by weather that pushes them to the brink of disaster.
(thunder)
evgeniy: We got sudden squalls appears,
with wind speed up to 55 knots.
(thunder)
narrator: In recent years,
global industries like oil and gas
have demanded ever-heavier cargos
be transported across the globe.
Single items can weigh up to 50,000 tons,
and that creates a real problem.
Andrew steele: The weights of these things,
it's just absolutely mind-boggling.
Just imagine trying to move that from a to b.
It'd become almost impossible.
Things like road and rail,
you just can't move a modern oil rig like that.
And the old solution of dragging them using tugs
just wasn't cutting it.
So, an entirely new approach was needed.
Narrator: The only viable solution
is to transport these exceptional cargos by sea,
but to do that requires an exceptional ship.
Enter the amethyst,
one of heavyweight ocean transportation's
most advanced vessels.
Nick bradbeer: This is a class of huge, heavy-lift ships,
and they're just awesome in scale, they're enormous,
and they can lift things which are so heavy,
you just can't lift and transport them
by any other means.
Narrator: This ship's deck is an incredible 600 feet long
and 158 feet wide.
♪ ♪
it's so big that no less than 16 statues of liberty
would fit onto it.
♪ ♪
the deck can also accommodate
both of these enormous oil rigs, just.
But they tower over 200 feet above sea level.
Andrew: Imagine trying to move a massive oil rig
weighing tens of thousands of tons, and worse than that,
it's not at all hydrodynamic.
It's not got a beautiful sleek hull like a boat.
It's basically a massive square,
so moving these things had become more or less impossible.
♪ ♪
man over radio: Evgeniy.
Narrator: As the amethyst approaches the rigs,
the 26-strong crew prepare the deck for the colossal cargo.
Evgeniy: So now they are putting the stagings down
on the main deck.
Narrator: The rigs have a combined weight
of 25,000 tons,
and that presents a fundamental engineering challenge.
Danielle george: Now, the most obvious problem
of carrying such heavy cargo on the deck of a ship
is the strength of the deck itself.
♪ ♪
amos winter: The amethyst has a very, very, very long deck,
so when it tries to pick up a load,
if the load was very heavy
and just concentrated right in the center of the deck,
it might try to "taco" the whole ship.
The front of the ship would hit the back of the ship.
Narrator: A deck of very thick steel would stop it caving in,
but it would also make the ship far too heavy.
In fact, it has a very thin deck.
Gabriel weymouth: The thickness of the steel is tiny
compared to the area.
Without any additional stiffening,
it's going to buckle like a piece of paper
under these loads.
(beeping)
narrator: The solution comes from dry land,
from inside skyscrapers.
The deck is only 1 inch thick.
But underneath it, there's a lattice structure
connecting it to a second thin deck.
The lattice is comprised
of very specifically shaped steel beams.
Their cross-section is like a capital I,
just like the I-beams that hold up skyscrapers.
Even when immense force presses down on them,
the shape should prevent any distortion
and protect the thin top skin of the deck.
Gabriel: And that's going to increase the stiffness
without increasing the weight very much
because, at the end of the day, this vessel needs to float.
Narrator: The next problem is how to distribute the load
across the deck.
Nick: It's really important that the cargo deck remains flat
because if it bends slightly
and part of the deck is higher than another part of the deck,
that load will all sit on the highest part of the deck
momentarily, which could break the ship.
♪ ♪
narrator: At a shipyard in kaohsiung, taiwan,
gpo are building two more heavy lifters
with the exact same design as the amethyst.
And they're in the midst of constructing
the super-strong, ultra-flat decks.
♪ ♪
giant piles of steel plates are being prepared.
♪ ♪
154 of them need to be fixed together.
That's a mile and a half of seams to be precision-welded.
♪ ♪
nick: Welding steel plate is very challenging,
but it's necessary for a ship like this.
♪ ♪
(speaking chinese)
hsu huei-lin, translated: We use carbon dioxide arc welding
to make the joints
because it's fast and gives a really smooth finish.
♪ ♪
narrator: Once the welding's complete,
the deck is inspected.
Narrator: Shipbuilding doesn't usually involve measurements
in tenths of inches,
but for these ships, it's vital.
Narrator: These vessels will be complete
in roughly a year's time.
♪ ♪
back in the gulf of mexico,
evgeniy is racing to rendezvous with the cargo.
Evgeniy: Hard aport.
Man: Zero nine zero.
Evgeniy: Zero nine zero, steady.
Man: Steady.
Man on radio: (radio chatter)
we're gonna count seven, four, seven, four.
Narrator: The amethyst must have
an extraordinarily powerful engine system
to maximize its speed.
The question is, what?
Narrator: With a total length of 738 feet,
a breadth of 158 feet and a height of 20 stories,
the amethyst is vast.
It needs to be to successfully pick up its consignment,
these two massive decommissioned oil rigs.
Narrator: Captain evgeniy checks his radar.
Evgeniy: We're just trying to locate the...
Where the first rig is now.
Narrator: He's closing in on the loading location
off new orleans in the gulf of mexico.
Evgeniy: It's on the starboard propulsion.
On the port propulsion.
Four twenty.
Man: Four twenty.
Narrator: Once the rigs are loaded,
the amethyst needs to carry them
more than 13,000 miles to oman as fast as possible.
Narrator: It's crucial that nothing goes wrong
with the propulsion system,
so chief engineer konstantin
has a computer system to monitor it.
Konstantin antufyev: My role here is I'm responsible
for all equipment.
Narrator: There's only one choice for the main engines.
Diesel power remains the standard,
and for a ship this size, the engines need to be gigantic.
One is not enough, so it has a pair on either side.
Danielle: Each engine is around 9,600 horsepower.
That's the equivalent of 12 ferrari v12 engines.
You know, these are really, really powerful engines.
Narrator: Extreme power means extreme weight.
Each engine weighs 132 tons.
The four of them together are heavier than a jumbo jet.
But curiously, these engines
are nowhere near the propellers.
Nick: In most ships powered by diesel engines,
the engine is connected through a gearbox to the propeller shaft
but in this ship, the engines
aren't physically connected to the propellers.
Narrator: The engines' massive size
means the only place they can fit is at the bow.
But that means a 540-foot-long drive shaft
connecting the engines to the propellers,
which can't be done.
Gabriel: One issue with having a 540-foot-long drive shaft
would be that it would need to be supported
all along that length, and that it would have to have bearings
and other kinds of equipment.
You'd have to have access to all those things,
and so that would take up a lot of space below the deck.
♪ ♪
narrator: Under the bridge and at the bow--
the only place there's room for them--
lie the beating heart of the ship,
the amethyst's engines.
To get the power to the propellers,
they drive electric generators,
then cables carry the power the entire length of the ship
to electric motors at the stern,
which directly drive the propellers.
No long drive shaft required.
It's an elegant solution, but it does mean
the electric motors at the stern
need to be exceptionally large as well.
Nick: The most powerful electric motor in most people's house
is probably in their washing machine,
and each of the motors on amethyst's propeller shafts
is 5,000 times more powerful than that.
Narrator: That kind of electric power
gives the amethyst the ultimate spin cycle.
And to generate sufficient thrust,
the propellers are 18 feet tall.
But what's really clever is the mechanics hidden inside them,
which means they have to be installed
with extreme precision.
♪ ♪
in taiwan, there's a rare chance
to see these propellers above the water.
They are installing the starboard prop
on the amethyst's sister ship, the emerald.
Fu siang lee, translated: This is a job that needs an engineer.
It's so precise, they have to sign off the measurements
before we can do anything.
Narrator: The blades are made
from a copper, nickel and aluminium alloy.
They're designed to cut through the water
with exceptional efficiency.
Narrator: It's the fastest ship in its class,
but it's what's inside the propeller shafts
that makes the amethyst propulsion system remarkable.
Each propeller has four blades.
Normally the system is solid.
Not on the amethyst.
Inside each shaft is an oil-filled hydraulic piston.
When these move, they alter the angle of the blades.
This means they can swivel or be feathered
to change their pitch
and therefore the thrust they produce.
They can also swivel into reverse,
so the shaft spins the same way to go forwards or back.
And when not needed, they have a zero-drag position.
Narrator: Time is money, and in heavy industry,
where an oil rig rents for upwards of $100,000 a day,
the amethyst has to be reliable,
even if the worst happens.
With four diesel engines and four electric motors,
even if there are multiple breakdowns,
both propellers keep turning.
Nick: This ship has the ability
to automatically hold her heading and position
in good weather,
and she can keep doing that even if a component fails.
That's why she has to have two motors per shaft
in case one breaks.
♪ ♪
narrator: The amethyst's propulsion system is a triumph.
The ship can cruise for 25,000 miles
without needing to fill up.
That's all the way round the planet.
Right now evgeniy is anxious to meet his cargo on time,
but cruising at high speed in a ship this large and heavy
makes one task particularly difficult:
Bringing it to a stop.
Danielle: It has huge amounts of momentum pushing it forward.
Now, the only way, really, to make that stop
is to have a force in the opposite direction
acting upon that ship.
♪ ♪
narrator: 8:00 a.M.
Captain evgeniy is motoring at full speed
to the location where the amethyst is about to load
one of its most challenging cargos yet:
Two scrap oil rigs that it will ship to oman.
(radio chatter)
evgeniy: Bridge, captain.
Narrator: With one of the biggest ships on the oceans,
even the simplest of operations like coming to a stop
has hidden complexities.
At sea, you can't just hit the brakes.
This ship weighs 31,000 tons empty.
Stopping it is like stopping a formula 1 car
that's traveling at over 700,000 miles an hour.
Gabriel: You have a car on land and you hit the brakes,
the friction between the tires and the road
will quickly bring the car to a stop,
but the friction against the hull of the amethyst
is very small,
and even if you turn the propellers off,
that thing will keep going for a very long time.
♪ ♪
narrator: In open water, the high tech propellers
can switch to reverse thrust
while spinning in the same direction.
That's 8,000 kilowatts all used to force water backwards.
It can stop the ship dead in 500 yards.
Evgeniy: Prepare starboard anchor.
Narrator: Time to drop anchor.
Evgeniy: Please report when be ready.
♪ ♪
narrator: Meet aleks.
He's the load master and has over 25 years' experience
supervising some of the most complex ocean cargo operations
on the planet.
He's heading out to the amethyst
to plan the detailed execution of the load.
Aleksandrs przendzinskis: The loading can complete three days.
But we need good weather.
Narrator: Now on board,
aleks studies the weather forecast with the captain.
It is not looking good.
Aleksandrs: Big question mark.
The direction the weather is going to, we don't like,
because actually the window is closing.
Evgeniy: The forecast becomes less friendly
for the loading operation itself, yeah.
But other look is not promising.
It's not promising at all, yeah.
Aleksandrs: Oh, seven?
Narrator: They need inch-perfect positioning
to load the oil rigs.
If there's bad weather, it'll mean delays.
If there's a storm, they won't be able to load at all.
And there is one on the horizon.
The question is, when will it hit?
The whole mission hangs in the balance.
Even in good weather, it is extremely difficult
for the amethyst to hold its position in the open sea.
Nick: A ship afloat can move
in what we call six degrees of freedom.
It can slide forward and backward,
left and right, up and down,
and it can also turn around each of those three axes,
rolling, pitching and yawing.
Narrator: The amethyst has special hinged rudders,
which gives it a much smaller turning circle
than many other ships of its size.
♪ ♪
in taiwan, they're installing them on the new ships,
and it needs to be done with incredible accuracy.
(speaking chinese)
chun an lin, translated: We need to precisely align
the center line from top to bottom
to make sure the rudder base is balanced when we install it.
Narrator: Fitting the rudders is not easy
in taiwan's tropical high temperatures.
In the heat of the day, the metal expands,
which could mean the team don't put the rudder
in the right place.
An inch off could compromise the ship's maneuverability.
So, they use a simple, if inconvenient, trick.
Chun an lin: We have to do it at night
to ensure we eliminate any chance of miscalculations.
Narrator: Even though the cargos are enormous,
loading them aboard the amethyst
will require extremely accurate maneuvering.
Fancy rudders alone are not enough.
Deep below the water line, near the very bottom of the vessel,
there are several curious shafts that traverse the ship.
Inside there are thrusters, extra side-on propellers
that can force water out of the shafts in controlled bursts.
Nick: The forces required to maintain its position precisely
are just enormous,
and that's why her bow and stern thrusters are huge.
They can generate very large amounts of thrust very quickly
when they're needed,
and stop again very quickly when they're not.
Narrator: There are four thrusters;
two at the bow and two at the stern.
Evgeniy: The four thrusters now in operational condition.
Number two and one bow thrusters
and number three and four stern thrusters,
so we can swing the vessel
in the desired direction how we need to.
Narrator: With these thrusters, the amethyst can move sideways
in tiny increments, as well as forwards and reverse.
♪ ♪
like the main propellers,
they can change the pitch of their blades
to control the thrust they are delivering.
They're part of what's called a dynamic positioning system,
but although it enables incredible control of the ship,
it can do nothing to control weather.
Either wind speed or wave height could halt the mission.
Aleksandrs: Yeah, to load these two rigs
we need wind less than ten knots,
and the sea stay at less than half a meter.
If it's above these limits,
then we cannot load because it's not safe.
We can damage the vessel, the cargo and, most importantly,
we also can harm our crew during loading.
♪ ♪
narrator: It's 6:00 p.M. Off new orleans,
and aleks checks the forecast.
(indistinct conversation)
evgeniy: ...Overnight.
♪ ♪
narrator: He discovers his weather window is shrinking.
The storm is heading their way,
and the crew are suddenly concerned.
(thunder)
♪ ♪
evgeniy: We've got sudden squalls appears,
with wind speed up to 55 knots.
Major swell coming from the south in the area.
(thunder)
narrator: The amethyst is waiting to load two oil rigs
with a combined weight of 25,000 tons.
(thunder)
but overnight, the weather takes a turn for the worse.
Evgeniy: Now we've got sudden squalls appears
with wind speed up to 55 knots.
Narrator: A force-eight gale is now blowing.
(indistinct conversation)
narrator: With gusts more than five times the wind speed
they can safely load in...
Narrator: ...The entire operation is in jeopardy.
If there's no window in this violent storm,
they might have to reschedule the operation.
Evgeniy: This is a good example of the adverse weather
can change gradually just within seconds.
Narrator: They resort to engine power
to try and stop the amethyst pulling anchor.
Evgeniy: But the anchor is holding well
and we are just confident that we are safe at the moment,
so we just get ready in all respects just in case.
(thunder)
narrator: After an anxious wait,
the lashing rain subsides, leaving just high winds.
Evgeniy needs to know how the rigs are doing.
If either is in trouble, the load is off.
Evgeniy: There are also compensating the wind effect
in the area.
So, hopefully they are okay.
♪ ♪
(beeping)
narrator: Next morning, the wind dies down.
But as the crew wait for the swell to return to safe limits,
new information suddenly comes in
about how deep the rigs are sitting in the water.
They're lower than expected.
This is a crisis for the amethyst
because of the highly unusual way
she's going to load the rigs.
25,000 tons of awkwardly shaped steel
looks impossible to heave onto a deck.
The gpo engineers had to defy shipbuilding logic.
Narrator: The way the amethyst will load the oil rigs
is to deliberately submerge its deck beneath them,
and then refloat to lift them out of the water.
The amethyst is known as a semi-submersible
because it only partially sinks.
Nick: There's something really impressive
about seeing something just so massive
submerge itself almost completely under water
and then come up again.
Just the scale of these things is mind-blowing.
♪ ♪
danielle: I find it absolutely incredible.
So, a ship that can sink itself in a controlled manner
sort of defies science.
♪ ♪
narrator: So, how do the amethyst's designers
achieve a feat that challenges the fundamentals
of ship design?
The answer is hidden under the deck.
♪ ♪
below the steel lattice,
there's no cargo hold, no cabins.
The ship's entire hull is made of ballast tanks.
When water is pumped into them,
it reduces the ship's displacement,
and the ship gradually begins to sink below the water line.
Narrator: The amethyst is ready to submerge,
but the news that the oil rigs are sitting lower than expected
in the water changes everything.
The ship will have to be lowered further than planned
to float the rigs over the deck,
and there's a bigger problem that needs urgent attention.
When submerged, guide posts welded to the deck
need to be visible above the water
to show the exact spot the rigs must align to.
Narrator: With the ship deeper,
these guide posts will be completely invisible.
Evgeniy: Our original design guide post is 7 meters,
so the guide post should be extended by 2 meters height
to be visible while the floating cargo will be over the deck.
Narrator: The whole operation will be called off
if the crew can't modify these guide posts.
Evgeniy: The option is to weld the special antenna
up to two meters high.
Narrator: Extending the guide posts
should enable the operation to continue.
The crew have to work fast.
They don't know how long the weather window will hold.
♪ ♪
finally, the captain is satisfied.
The huge deck area
is now ready to receive the two giant cargos,
and the operation can begin.
It will take about six hours.
♪ ♪
the hull of the amethyst
can fit 160,000 cubic yards of water,
enough to fill 49 olympic swimming pools
and create a potential danger.
Nick: As the ship moves slightly in the waves,
all that ballast water would slosh from one side to the other
or from one end to the other
and the ship would roll over, no doubt about it.
There's a very simple solution to avoiding capsizing your ship,
which is to break the ship up
into a large number of ballast tanks.
Divide the sloshing surface up into as many pieces as you can.
Narrator: The hull is split
into a total of 76 ballast tanks,
laid out in three layers.
This allows the crew to regulate
exactly which parts of the hull are emptied
so that the ship is always kept stable.
♪ ♪
man: Ballasting starting.
Narrator: Inside the bridge, the crew begin the submerge.
Evgeniy: This is the main brain for the cargo operation,
so this is actually the system
which this vessel is designed for.
Narrator: The ship's 95,000-square-foot deck
starts to sink down 30 feet, or nine and half meters.
Evgeniy: This is the physical process of taking the water
into the designated ballast tanks,
how it is calculated to know that the vessel,
to get the positive stability all the time
for the cargo operation.
♪ ♪
narrator: By early morning,
the ship's hull is successfully submerged.
But this is when it's at its most vulnerable.
Evgeniy: I can't say that we are just not nervous. We are.
♪ ♪
narrator: Partially submerged, the amethyst waits
for the first of its monumental cargos to be floated over it.
The next part of the operation is the most dangerous:
Bringing the cargo into physical contact
with the amethyst.
This rig alone weighs 13,500 tons.
So the amethyst's crew
must make sure the ship doesn't sink altogether.
Evgeniy: All the personnel must be very vigilant all the time,
and especially the guys who's operating the particular system,
including the guys who's controlling this.
Nick: When the ship's ballasted down for loading,
she's in a very vulnerable position.
It doesn't take very much flooding
before she's at serious risk of sinking.
♪ ♪
narrator: The ship now has
roughly 100,000 tons of water inside its hull.
All that's stopping it plunge further
are the parts above sea level.
Where they break the water line
is known as the water plane area.
Nick: When amethyst is ballasted up
in her transport configuration,
she has a huge water plane area,
and that gives her enormous stability.
But when she's ballasted down in the loading configuration,
her water plane is tiny.
Narrator: The bridge holds up the bow of the ship
and crucially, these two giant towers at the stern.
Narrator: As long as they're kept above sea level,
the water plane area will be large enough
to stop the ship diving to the bottom of the ocean.
♪ ♪
man on radio: Weatherly. Weatherly, this is rig mover.
You copy me?
(radio chatter)
narrator: At last.
With the weather holding, the first rig can be loaded.
Narrator: Aleks instructs three tugboats
to gently pull the rig towards the amethyst.
Narrator: The closer they get, the higher the risk.
Nick: There's not a lot of ship above the water.
She doesn't have a lot of spare buoyancy,
and there are tugs,
and there is a heavy object moving around her.
There's a very high risk of collision.
Narrator: The corners of the load
now need to be tied to the ship
so it can be carefully winched in
to line up with the guide posts.
Narrator: With four ropes connected, the rig
can be pulled into position directly over the deck.
Man on radio: Well, we're down to 40.
♪ ♪
narrator: They pull the rig inch by inch
towards the guide posts,
which mark exactly where the rig needs to be positioned.
Narrator: It is the critical stage.
When the amethyst lifts the rig out of the water,
even an inch off the mark could upset the weight distribution
across the deck and destabilize the entire ship.
Narrator: They get it close, but not close enough.
One final effort is all it needs.
Gabriel: In order to reemerge from under the water,
it has to shift out 100,000 tons of water
from its tanks.
It has to do so quickly, which is pretty amazing.
Narrator: The ship is now ready to lift itself
and 13,500 tons of oil rig clean out of the water.
It's the moment of truth.
♪ ♪
narrator: In the gulf of mexico,
the amethyst is about to start
the final and most hazardous stage of the loading operation.
The rig is now in place over the submerged deck.
They can start bringing the ship up.
Everybody's tense.
The 13,500-ton rig is locked in position,
but until it makes contact with the ship,
it's still floating and unpredictable.
Nick: Because she's vulnerable
for the whole process that she's ballasted down,
amethyst needs to move thousands and thousands of tons of water.
♪ ♪
narrator: Pumps with high-speed impeller blades
use centrifugal force to fling water out of the tanks
at an incredible rate of over four million gallons per hour.
(water gurgling)
instead of days, they can be emptied in seven hours.
♪ ♪
(whirring)
evgeniy: Pumps are big in order to have a bigger capacity.
It is a bit noisy here.
♪ ♪
narrator: As the ship starts to rise,
when deck and rig meet, it's crunch time.
Evgeniy: There are a lot of factors can go wrong,
and we should be ready for any of this.
We are trying to do this, and until now we are managing that.
Nick: One of the riskiest points in the whole operation
is as the ship lifts up and makes contact with the load.
We have to be sure the load's in exactly the right place.
Narrator: The pumps are so powerful,
the sudden buoyancy has to be tightly controlled.
Right now, if anything goes wrong,
it will be a catastrophe.
Nick: If there's a problem with the ballasting system
and the ship doesn't come up exactly as she was meant to,
that could cause the ship to lose stability,
that could result in her capsizing.
Narrator: But the amethyst can shift her own weight around
to keep her balance.
The pumps don't just move the water out of the tanks
and back into the sea;
they can also move water around the ship.
However the load is sitting,
amethyst can shift her center of gravity
to remain stable.
Gabriel: As it lifts up these giant oil rigs,
it needs to be careful to keep the center of the weight
in the center of the vessel,
and so if the oil rigs are slightly off-center,
slightly further forward or left or right,
it can compensate by moving the water from one tank to another.
Narrator: The ship keeps rising out of the water.
♪ ♪
success.
The amethyst has loaded the first rig.
Evgeniy: So, we are safe.
(gulls squawking)
(radio chatter)
narrator: The next day, the team need to repeat the process
to get the second rig onto the deck.
♪ ♪
as the ship rises once more,
the ballast team keep careful watch.
♪ ♪
both rigs are out of the water and in the right place.
Now the crew can weld them securely onto the deck
before their long journey to oman.
♪ ♪
at last, the amethyst and her incredible 25,000-ton cargo
are ready to set sail for the other side of the world.
It's a job almost no other ship on earth could do.
Evgeniy: We consider that the loading operation
has been completed.
♪ ♪
narrator: From her incredible super-strong deck
to her super-powerful propulsion system...
From inch-perfect positioning
to her complex multi-tank ballast arrangement,
she's one of heavy industry's greatest superstructures.
Gabriel: Amethyst is remarkable,
because they put all of these different technologies together
to give a heavy-lift ship that can do its job
just about as perfectly as you can imagine.
♪ ♪
captioned by side door media services