nothing strange about that shape…
Purpose, go fast, go dry. Container vessels have a lot of trouble with waves smashing over the bow. The containers then look like a bunch of beaten up cardboard boxes. This “hood” on the bow has to keep front dry (including the mooring gear etc.).
Here is a similar ship, Maersk Itea:

This is one of the recent built Alstom LNG’s:

Gunner, thanks for that post, very interesting! I’ve always wondered what they kept busy with except for building warships!

Hallo84, it is possible to make such list, you can see that by ordered Gross tonnage (on which most lists are based). Being capable of building a radar or VHF radio is by no means a real shipbuilding capacity. So subcontracting to certain electronics or cargo gear manufacturers doesn’t really mean that those guys have a shipbuilding capability. If you look at Gross Tonnage you do know who the shipbuilders are.

Not a bad idea.
Do you have any idea where such a ranking can be found?
Let’s start with Number one:
South Korea,
Main builders: Hyundai Heavy Industries and second Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME). Third one in row is Samsung.
The biggest things they built are of course ULCCs, but they also build many container vessels and now LNG carriers too.

I’m actually quite interested in the French and other European shipbuilding at the moment. France used to have Alstom as a major builder, building ULCCs and also Queen Mary 2, but do they have any large wharfs and projects left? Do they still build tankers? I did see some LNG carrier from them not so long ago, but I don’t know whether she was old or not.
Other major shipbuilding in Europe is probably centered in Germany (but again I don’t know what exactly they build except for warships), Finland (cruise liners and ice breakers), Spain (tankers and what else?) and Italy (cruise ships and others?)
I wonder where they are in the list.

The specialist vessels are however more devided among specialised builders, which is most likely the only reason European wharfs still have work. Although the new trend is to let a cheaper country (China, Korea and recently the East European countries, Poland and Romania) build a cheap hull and then tow it to the country of destination for outfitting with the high tech equipment.

Some prices to share too, the common price for a VLCC (crude carrier of approx 330m length and below 300,000 dwt) costs approx $110million, in the beginning of 2004, that was only $79million ), for an container vessel of 6,200TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit), you pay about $91million.

Top 3 is all Asia, but who is 4 and next? Where is Singapore in this list? and Russia? And even US?

South Korea (hyundai, daewoo)
China (China shipbuilding corp?)
Japan (Mitsui heavy industries, Mitsubishi heavy industries, Hakodate, etc)

Welcome to Daewoo, and yes those ARE cars on the left…

Another Daewoo build:

This one was built by Hanjin, I think that is the Number 4 in Korea:

And her smaller sister.

Palash/Palma as mounted on Tarantul III corvette No955 (first fitted in some greenish colour, pictures of that were posted first in Airbase.ru). Without the missiles as of yet, but she was only fitted a few months back. (again pictures from Airbase.ru)

Yeps same here, don’t see any Orekhs and no Orekh is no shtil. I think it’s just two revolvers extra in front.

From a c i g .org (naval section) Here they are.
Mussa Ben Nussair and the other picture shows two of the non-helicopter Assad class along with some of the Iraqi Lupo’s (now in Italian service as Artiglieri).

For the landing vessels you’re probably right, but on the tankers, USN tankers also have a different name with more or less civilian operation.
Russian replenishment fleet is even fully civilian, no numbers on the vessels, civilian painting etc. But all in all just fleet replenishers too…

As for Argus, her role might seem military in one occasion, but hospital ship can hardly be called a military duty.

Fort class, indeed they have some self defence, but all in all they just have a regular tanker role. I think their choice for merchant crews is just a choice of expertise. They would otherwise have to train yet another type of people in their schools, while people with such expertise can easily be found elsewhere.
Armed helicopters, many merchant ships would actually be able to do that and I don’t think that is a “proof” of the military role of the RFA, as mostly they just carry transport helicopters.

Any idea what the construction of the Knight class is? Double hulled I suppose if she’s built to classification rules, and do they have measures with sloshing zones too, which seems a likely problem with such ships?

I do know why they have registered them in the merchant (for US, their replenishers are not really registered like that, but they are not really USN either). If you have a merchant tanker which makes a spill or just breaks apart, then there is the CLC (Civil Liability Convention) and the Fund and in some cases Supplementary Fund to pay a part of the damage, the owner (RFA, State) only has to pay a part of the damage done by the spilled oil (which one is applicable, depends on the amount of damage and claims).
If a Navy tanker on the other hand has such a problem, the State will have to pay EVERYTHING, and that can be a big amount of money… For US such tricks don’t count as they have signed none of the above and are generally not signing ANY convention (only making their own crappy regulations).
For Russia and UK, with relatively large tanker fleets in the Navy, this makes quite a difference in cost in case of an accident.

Merchant, from the CIA factbook (which has to be taken with a pinch of salt)

total: 563 ships (1000 GRT or over) 4,925,489 GRT/5,052,931 DWT
by type: bulk carrier 11, cargo 366, chemical tanker 31, container 54, liquefied gas 12, passenger 12, passenger/cargo 14, petroleum tanker 14, refrigerated cargo 30, roll on/roll off 16, specialized tanker 3
foreign-owned: 152 (Australia 1, Belgium 2, Denmark 9, Finland 9, Germany 58, Ireland 13, Netherlands Antilles 1, Norway 6, Sweden 21, UK 21, US 11)
registered in other countries: 222 (Antigua and Barbuda 10, Australia 2, Austria 2, The Bahamas 25, Bermuda 1, Canada 1, Cyprus 18, Isle of Man 2, Liberia 13, Luxembourg 3, Malta 5, Marshall Islands 5, Netherlands Antilles 69, Norway 3, Panama 26, Philippines 20, Portugal 1, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 7, Singapore 1, Turkey 1, UK 2, US 4, unknown 1) (2005)

LPD fleet, is just two, Rotterdam and Johan de Witt now (not that there is any logical tie between the two, Merchant fleet and LPD fleet, though).

Turbinia, the RFA fleet is in essence really a merchant fleet. At sea those guys even sail with their AIS on and with full information on it. As far as the tankers go there’s nothing really military on those either. The only doubtful cases are indeed the amphibs, but on the other hand it’s just bringing a cargo to a destination, again a merchant task. (and yes that cargo contains weapons, but all in all they do not participate in real combat). You could practically use a cruiseliner to bring 4,000 soldiers to a place too, but would that make it a military vessel? Or even worse, bring 4,000 people to a destination who are all armed at that spot???)

As for the Dutch, this is a great addition to the fleet, and also a good signal for export, normally “new” export products are hardly bought when the domestic navy doesn’t buy it.