The Assassin (Sha ren zhe Tang Zhan)

In this episode...

In my opinion, there's no other vessel like this in the world.

...the planet's largest heavy lift ship...

We can carry the Eiffel Tower

and the Statue of Liberty at the same time.

This is absolutely

a game changing piece of engineering.

...and the groundbreaking innovations from the past...

Whoo!

For something 60 years old,

this is really, really incredible.

This was the first system of this kind in the world.

It's totally unique.

...that make the impossible possible.

captions paid for by discovery communications

The world's oceans are home to some of mankind's

most extraordinary engineering achievements.

Out at sea, the megastructure is king.

And ships, oil rigs, and floating factories

are all growing to an unprecedented scale.

But these oversized objects present engineers

with a giant challenge.

What happens when they need to be moved?

Marine engineer Michele Seij is part of the team

designing a solution.

The structure for this industry

are the biggest in the world that need to be transported.

In front of us, you can see an oil rig

which is operating around the globe

and is difficult to move by itself.

The cargoes that we have to transport are,

in some cases, five times as heavy as this platform.

They need to be transported a distance of over 10,000 miles.

That's a trip about half around the world.

In order to transport these cargoes,

we need to build unique piece of engineering

that's bigger and more capable

than anything presently available.

But now...

...there is an answer.

This is the Boka vanguard.

This is absolutely a game changing

piece of engineering.

She carries some of the largest machinery built on the planet...

Hundreds and thousands of tons, she carries on her back.

And she carries it for thousands and thousands of miles.

And the way this vessel pulls it off

has to be seen to be believed.

The Boka vanguard can deliberately sink itself.

By submerging below the surface,

the vanguard can load cargo of a truly astonishing size.

She's absolutely amazing.

Everything on this ship

is different from the standout vessel.

Then the Boka vanguard

does something even more extraordinary.

It rises from the depths

and plucks its mega cargo from the sea.

It's unbelievable if you start thinking about

a vessel like this that you're actually able

to lift cargoes out of the water

that are weighing over 100,000 tons or even more.

At 902 feet long and 230 feet wide,

the Boka vanguard is the world's largest heavy lift ship.

Onboard is a 12-story superstructure

that contains the bridge and living quarters.

It's four 90-foot buoyancy towers

can be reconfigured for unique loads

and it can sink 66 feet below the waterline

before lifting massive cargo weighing up to 120,000 tons.

In order for vanguard to deliver

the planet's largest cargo around the globe,

engineers have had to solve a series of problems.

How can a vessel sink and reemerge at will

while lifting unprecedented weight?

We had to change our traditional designs

and come up with something totally new

to move cargoes that no other vessel in the world can move.

What does it take to maneuver this monster machine

through the world's most dangerous seas?

She has to go around the horn of Africa, which is some of

the most treacherous waters on the planet.

And how does the crew of this prized megastructure

protect it from disaster?

So the worst case scenario

is damage to the hull of the vessel,

flooding of the vessel, and sinking of the vessel.

First mate Rudolph Limanis and the crew are regularly faced

with these seemingly impossible challenges.

We can see, actually, another is standing there,

and you obviously cannot use any kind of crane

for lifting this thing out of the water.

It's too big, too heavy.

There are no cranes in the world

that can lift something as big as this.

The other option might be towing.

So use tugboats and just tell them wherever they need to be,

but it means that it takes a lot longer time for us.

And it also might be more dangerous.

The weather can be perilous outside.

And if this structure like this is being towed,

it means that she's out there in any kind of weather.

There might be storms or high waves.

So this is when the submerging of the vessel comes into play.

But is it possible to sink

and then raise an enormous vessel

and its cargo at the flick of a switch?

To find out, the vanguard's engineers

will need to look to the past.

On the shores of the Gulf of Mexico...

Are we ready?

Okay. Gonna start.

...marine engineer Krijn Haasnoot

is rallying his crew for an off-shore adventure.

What we basically do is that we install rocks on the seabed.

Today, the tideway rollingstone

is used in pipe laying operations,

but she has a hidden past.

Everything behind me was not there

before the conversion in 1994.

From here to the casings,

it was all just flat deck.

When it was built in 1979,

this ship changed the world.

This was the super servant I,

the first ever large scale heavy lift ship.

Capable of sinking at will,

she could lift loads heavier than anything

that had come before.

And the bones of this vessel hold the key

to how the Boka vanguard works.

The whole deck was empty so they could take

as much cargo as possible.

You can see we put a lot of equipment there,

but the structure is still the same.

If you know where to look,

you can see the structure of the old super servant

all over the boat.

First mate Floris Zeijlmaker

is on the hunt for the tell tale signs

of historic engineering innovation.

By filling 24 huge tanks in her hull with water,

the super servant was able to sink its deck

21 feet below the surface.

This allowed cargo to float directly above it.

Before the tanks were emptied, buoyancy increased

and the payload lifted from the water.

The secret behind this game changing system

lies below deck.

The super servants' compressors were capable of pumping

over 88,000 cubic feet of water

in and out of the hull every hour,

allowing the ship to achieve the seemingly impossible.

The now-converted super servant led the way

for a new form of heavy lift ship,

and few know of its trailblazing past.

We, as a crew, are very proud

to work and live on this vessel with such an amazing history.

Super servant was one of

the most innovative ships in the world.

The Boka vanguard is almost seven times

the size of the super servant

and can lift many times the weight.

It's the largest semi-submersible lift ship

ever built.

All thanks to a supersized version

of the technology used on the super servant,

which is hidden in one of Boka vanguard's

most hard to reach locations.

We're at the top of one of the buoyancy casings.

There's very few people get to come up here.

When megastructures need to be moved

across the world's oceans,

it calls for engineering on an epic scale.

This is the "Boka vanguard,"

the biggest heavy lift ship on the planet.

And it's no ordinary vessel.

The vanguard has the astonishing ability

to sink itself below the surface of the sea

before lifting its giant floating cargoes

straight out of the water.

Yes? Okay, copy that.

Start the ballast down. Thank you.

Onboard, engineers rely on cutting edge technology

to help pull off this complex procedure.

This is the main console on these monitors here.

We can see all our ballast system,

the piping, the pumps.

These blocks, they represent our ballast tank.

Total 96.

Each ballast tank is connected with a valve.

And on these screens here,

we can open and close the valves as needed.

When the valves are open, the water is flowing in.

The vanguard's 96 ballast tanks

can take on more than 52 million gallons of water,

allowing her to lift weights heavier

than any vessel has ever been capable of before.

So in the beginning, when I start my operation,

most of the tanks are empty.