Hong Kong-Based OOCL Owned the Largest Passenger Ship, Oil Tanker, and Container Ship

If you live in Hong Kong or near an important seaport, you may have spotted ships bearing the acronym OOCL, which stands for Orient Overseas Container Line, a container shipping and logistics company headquartered in Hong Kong.

In 1970, its founder, Tung Chao-yung, better known as C.Y. Tung, acquired RMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest passenger ship built up to that time, in 1942—a title she held until she was destroyed by fire in Victoria Harbour in 1972. She was the sister ship of RMS Queen Mary, which was the fastest passenger ship between 1936 and 1937, and again from 1938 to 1952.

In 1979, C.Y. Tung acquired hull 1016 from the Japanese Sumitomo Heavy Industries shipyard. After lengthening the vessel and renaming her Seawise Giant, this crude oil tanker measured 458.45 meters (1,504.1 feet) in length, making her the longest ship ever built—a record she still holds today.

In 2017, 35 years after the death of its founder, OOCL took delivery of its latest class of container ships. At the time of delivery, OOCL Hong Kong became the first ship to surpass the 21,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) threshold, meaning she could carry more than 21,000 20-foot-long intermodal containers. She was also the largest container ship in the world until she was surpassed by MSC Gülsün in 2019.