The Assassin (Sha ren zhe Tang Zhan)

In this episode...

...the biggest oil tanker on the planet.

This is a massive ship.

...and the groundbreaking innovations from history...

It's an amazing piece of engineering.

It was something that really hadn't been done before.

...that make the impossible possible.

captions paid for by discovery communications

oceans cover 70% of the earth's surface.

They're our planet's life support system

and a lifeline for global commerce.

The seas are the highways for world trade.

And it's estimated that thousands of boats and ships

are operating on them at any given time.

Naval architect Nick Bradbeer is at a simulator

at Solent university, Southhampton

that allows him to recreate today's

heavily congested shipping lanes.

Global trade has driven a huge increase

in the amount of shipping in the world.

90% of goods moved around the world move by sea,

and most of them move across a relatively small number

of important shipping routes. Some of those routes pass

through quite narrow choke points,

and those areas might see 600 ships passing in a single day.

They get very busy.

The modern cargo ships that fill these shipping lanes

are sophisticated machines, but it's taken engineers years

of pioneering innovation to get here.

Around 1200 A.D., the first ocean crossing traders

were the Polynesians, crossing from island to island

in canoes. By the 1500s,

sir Walter Raleigh and sir Francis Drake used galleon ships

to sail around the globe exchanging goods.

But it wasn't until 400 years later

that Norwegian Roald Amundsen crossed the final frontier...

The arctic waters of the northwest passage.

Today, thousands of ships travel these same routes,

creating a massive traffic jam.

With more and more goods to move

along these busy maritime highways,

many experts believe the solution

isn't to build more ships, but to build bigger.

This is supertanker Europe,

the biggest oil tanker in the world.

It's capable of carrying almost half a megaton of cargo

through some of the harshest seas on the planet.

It's an incredible machine.

This is just an absolutely enormous ship.

The nerve center of this colossal machine

lies six floors above deck on the bridge.

From here, captain Nedjeljko Lobrovic navigates

the crude oil on board around the world.

With so much cargo to transport,

engineers had to build a ship on an unprecedented scale.

Supertanker Europe is 249 feet high

with a 1,247-foot long deck.

It's capable of holding seven times its own weight

in crude oil,

enough to fill 15,000 road tankers.

The monster ship is pushed through the water

by a 103-ton propeller

and steered by a rudder that weighs an incredible 251 tons.

Everything about this vessel is super sized.

Even the anchor chains that are stored in lockers

at the bow of the ship.

Their job is to pull up the anchors that weigh 24 tons each.

It may seem like a simple task,

but on a supertanker, this requires some epic engineering.

These anchors need to be strong enough

to hold the fully laden 551,000-ton ship in place.

Their chains alone weigh 340 tons.

It takes an elite crew

on board to operate this incredible machine.

And this ambitious supertanker needs a team of engineers

that aren't afraid to push the boundaries.

To design, build, and run a ship of this size

requires us to overcome

some seemingly impossible engineering challenges.

The first thing is, how do you build a ship this long

strong enough that it won't just snap in two at sea?

How do you prevent millions of liters of flammable cargo

from catching fire or exploding?

And finally, how do you build an engine powerful enough

to push a ship this big through the water?

Designing, building, and operating a ship of this size

is a seemingly impossible engineering challenge.

Now, the real challenge in designing a ship structure

is the middle.

When a ship moves through waves, they bend it up and down.

And we need to make sure the structure is strong enough

that the ship won't break its back,

especially in the middle.

That's where those bending loads are the greatest.

And that's where it's most likely to break.

Now, as the ship gets longer those bending loads

get bigger and bigger and harder and harder to design to resist.

For ship as big as this one,

building a structure that's strong enough

is a real challenge.

Supertanker Europe is wide enough and long enough

to carry over 2,000 cars on its deck.

So gigantic that unassisted, it takes over three miles

and up to 21 minutes to come to a stop.

For a ship this massive with such slow braking ability,

any type of impact could be devastating, and out at sea,

danger can come in many shapes and forms.

The key to supertanker's safety may lie deep within a piece

- of incredible marine history. - See if I can fit here.

So far, so good. Here we go. Ooh, I'm caught.

Here we go.

This is supertanker Europe,

the biggest oil tanker in the world,

capable of carrying over 100 million gallons

of crude oil on board.

Everything about this ship is a feat of super-sized engineering.

It's as tall as a 24-story building

and 223-feet wide,

double the size of the locks on the Panama canal.

At 1,247-feet long,

it's much larger than the Titanic.

But out on the open ocean, gale force winds can hit

43 miles per hour with waves over 33-feet high.

This is a brutal environment, even for a super tanker.

For chief officer Josip Ivanov,

one of the biggest threats

is the unpredictable force of nature.

To make sure this massive ship stays unbreakable

even in the roughest waters,

engineers looked to a pioneering innovation of the past.

Naval architect Nick posh

is at the Menominee river in Michigan,

home to one of the earliest examples

of a revolutionary design.

Wow. There it is.

This ship, the William H. Donner,

was built in 1914,

it was in service for about 100 years.

The William H. Donner is huge,

once carrying up to 22,000 tons.

And this ship once worked

in one of the toughest trading environments in the world.

Trading iron and coal across the Great Lakes

has been testing engineers for centuries.

Demand for ore and coal at the beginning of the 20th century

grew very rapidly,

so ships had to grow bigger in order to carry more cargo.

But some weren't strong enough for the task.

Some were literally breaking their backs.

In 1906, British naval architect sir Joseph Isherwood

created an ingenious way

to build massive, strong ships...

...known as the Isherwood system.

His invention was a unique internal framework

running from bow to stern

and leaving no weak spot in the middle.

This is an awesome piece of marine history.

You don't see very many intact ships this age anymore.

Nick is making his way to the deepest part

of this historic wreck to find out how

the William H. Donner has survived for so long.

I can really tell, this is a really old ship

with all the rivets you have on going on right here.

This is a very old method of ship building.

Watch your step.

So this looks like to be the old coal room.

Oh, geez. Don't step on that.

This is where they would basically feed the boilers

to propel the steam turbine to propel the ship.

What's in here?

There is an old anchor chain in here and actually an anchor.

So it really feels like you stumbled

into a treasure trove in here

because of all the history. I feel like an ant

in here is what... What I... what I feel like, so.

But the ingenious idea that paved the way for bigger,

safer ships lies even further below.

Wow, this is a really tiny hole.

Through this hole, looks like you'll be able to get

all the way to the bottom of the ship.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to fit in here,

but we'll give it a go.

Let's see. See if I can fit here.

So far, so good.

And here we go. Ooh, I'm caught.

Here we go. All right.

Here, Nick can finally see the secret

to how this ship has lasted for over a century.

So these big transverse frames form a giant belt

around the hull. They serve a structural purpose

in that it keeps the ship from collapsing in on itself.

The longitudinal frames you see here

keep the ship from bending longways or longitudinally.

Traditional ships were constructed with closely spaced

transverse frames from the keel up to the deck.

But over time, as ships got bigger and cargo got heavier,

this structure couldn't keep up.

But by using a combination of transverse frames

with more tightly spaced longitudinal frames,

the Isherwood's system was born