Ship Building
There are as many methods of ship building as there are ships on the water. However, here are some of the basic techniques, both historical and modern.
Ship Building Then
According to Tricoastal.com, one popular method of building wooden ships for centuries was carvel, or "caravel," construction, which derives from the design of Portuguese caravels in the 15th century. In this method, the edges of each plank are flush with one another and align instead of overlapping. The seam between the boards is sealed with cotton or hemp strands, which are then covered with putty or pitch. In another method, called cold-molded construction, the ship is built from several layers of planking, which are then glued to each other to form a hard shell.
The ironclad, which bridged the gap between wooden ships and modern steel ones, was made of iron plates that covered a wooden hull. However, as soon as ship builders were confident that the entire hull could be made of metal, this design was obsolete.
Ship Building Today
A 21st-century ship is usually assembled using prefabricated segments. Multi-deck steel segments of the ship will be built somewhere else and then lifted into place at the building dock. Some building docks even install the pipes and electrical wiring in the separate pieces before they are combined into a complete hull, to minimize labor afterward.
The world's largest cruise ship is currently the Oasis of the Seas, built in a Finnish shipyard by a Korean company. It is 1,180 feet long, or nearly 300 feet longer than the Titanic. It was assembled using this method of separate parts being put together later.
Ship building in the United States is in decline, compared to the world's largest ship builders, China and Korea. However, navy-contracted ships are still built in the United States in shipyards like Avondale in Louisiana. According to Nola.com, though defense company Northrop Grumman is soon leaving the shipyard, contracts for two American oil tankers have been moved up by the Navy from 2017 to 2014, ensuring a steady flow of work for shipbuilders at Avondale.
The Navy has even built a ship made of steel salvaged from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, called the USS New York. The ship uses 24 tons of highly symbolic scrap steel from Ground Zero. The steel was molded in Amite, Louisiana in 2003, and "those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence," according to a Navy captain who was present. Rather than being made into a memorial, in the spirit of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, this catastrophe is being resurrected into a new ship.
