– what is the limit to how big a ship can really be?

Question

I recently read an article that the Royal Caribbean have just given the go ahead for the largest ever cruise liner to set sail, it’s nearly 1200ft long and has something ridiculous like 5 water slides and a zoo on it (maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you get the point).

It got me thinking – is there a ceiling to how large a boat can be? Does buoyancy have a limit? If you ignored the impracticality of mooring and getting into smaller bodies of water, is the capacity of Ship building limitless?

In: 2380

Answer 1

For cargo ships, the practical limit is the size of the Panama and Suez canals. Ignoring those factors, you need to worry about waves and wind and the depth of the ocean where you want to make port. There’s nothing about floating that gives us a limit though.