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This image has been making the rounds on the internet, with the following caption:

This is a ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships.

Image collected from 9gag.com showing the ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships.

The obvious question being: is this statement correct or is the picture photoshopped? And yes, I spent quite a bit of time searching around, but reverse image search only turns up the same image with the same caption all over the internet for me.

Flimzy
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David Mulder
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    Naturally such a thing exists. [This is a truck-trucking truck, trucking trucking trucks.](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BmXmy.jpg) Often, imports and such move in one direction, leaving empty trucks (and ships) at the destination. It is more efficient if another truck (or ship) brings the empty ones back instead of dedicating resources to bring back each one separately. –  Nov 29 '14 at 18:13
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    Technically, this should be a "shipping-ship shipping-ship, shipping shipping ships" since the ships it is shipping are shipping ships, not just regular ships (as the original wording claims). – Eli Rose May 14 '15 at 18:36
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    @EliRose The original wording isn't inaccurate; it's just less precise than your wording. – Daniel Oct 29 '15 at 15:11
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    @Daniel: You're right! Really I think the problem is with saying "technically". https://xkcd.com/1475/ – Eli Rose Oct 29 '15 at 15:24
  • Someone should write a fanfic about these vessels, featuring a [non-canon romantic relationship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_(fandom)) between two of them... – Nate Eldredge Dec 10 '22 at 20:01

1 Answers1

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Yes.

It appears to be a picture of the MV Blue Marlin - in fact it is written on the middle of the stern of the ship.

Blue Marlin is a semi-submersible heavy lift ship from Dockwise Shipping of the Netherlands. Designed to transport very large semi-submersible drilling rigs above the transport ship's deck, [...]

With this information, it is not hard to find other photos of the ship making the same or similar trips, so the chance that this has been significantly photoshopped seems remote:

Oddthinking
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    How could I have missed that@name of the ship on the bow... Still, that's one amazing ship :O http://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-heavy-lift-ship-transports-rigs-and-other-ships-3.jpg and http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ba7eOMhtu9I/maxresdefault.jpg Either way, the ship looked square on the photo... which was the other reason I was a bit skeptical, must have been a play of the perspective~ – David Mulder Nov 27 '14 at 10:18
  • Oops, not bow. Stern. The stern rather square. The bow isn't. – Oddthinking Nov 27 '14 at 10:31
  • I doubt those are ships: perhaps they're river boats. – ChrisW Nov 27 '14 at 11:14
  • @ChrisW: They are 8-10 metres wide, and I guess 40-50 metres long. I would call them river ships. But it depends on your definition of "ship", though. I guess they were built by cheap Chinese labor for use on European rivers... – Alexander Nov 27 '14 at 12:18
  • @ChrisW: I considered briefly whether they were boats and decided any vessel that size must surely be carrying lifeboats, and hence be ships, but no, you are right. [This page](http://jalopnik.com/5897529/this-is-a-ship-carrying-a-ship-carrying-a-ship-carrying-a) explains they are riverboats and pontoons (referencing a Dutch page.) On the other hand, by a technicality, the second from top boat, for example, has the top boat on it, so it's ship, right? :-) – Oddthinking Nov 27 '14 at 12:22
  • (I am using the definition I was taught: if it is carrying a boat, it is a ship.) – Oddthinking Nov 27 '14 at 12:23
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    Haha, in Dutch a LOT of people would be insulted if you would call those boats boats :P But that's because in Dutch a boat is just really small. When a friend of mine asked her uncle whether she could join them on a day on their 'boot' (a similar one to the ones on these pictures) he replied that they could throw a line out and attach an inflatable boat to it so that she would what she asked for (after which he explained (apparently with passion) that he owned a ship, not a boat). This page in english writes about a similar concept: http://goo.gl/c9vRFv – David Mulder Nov 27 '14 at 13:44
  • @Alexander: Make that about 150 meter. Well, the longest ones can actually be up to 285 meter (though I have never seen one of those, just found it on the dutch wiki article), but the Blue Martin is 224 meters long, subtracting the bow and stern you end up with around 150 meter I would guess which is about a V class 'inlandship'. – David Mulder Nov 27 '14 at 13:49
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    Are the ships the ship shipping ship is shipping actually shipping ships (i.e. ships used for shipping)? Genuine question. This answer covers "ship shipping ship ships ships" but not "ship shipping ship ships shipping ships". – user56reinstatemonica8 Nov 27 '14 at 18:04
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    I have a hard time believing the exact image--why are the ships built in a fashion that allows them to be stacked like this? That strikes me as over-engineering. The ship being real doesn't mean the particular load is real. – Loren Pechtel Nov 27 '14 at 19:13
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    @user568458 Your comment is unclear because you didn't make use of en dashes, like the OP. – DBedrenko Nov 27 '14 at 20:10
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    @LorenPechtel they are built to be stackable most likely because the people buying them need to get them delivered somehow, and actually sailing each would likely be expensive as well as put wear on them. Would you pay the new car price for a car that already had 6000 miles on it? – Andy Nov 27 '14 at 21:22
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    @DavidMulder A small boat is also known as a [dinghy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinghy). Larger boats include [canal boats and barges](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barge), [tugboats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tugboat), [lifeboats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn-class_lifeboat), and any/all [riverboats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverboat), not to mention [submarines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine). [Inland ship](https://www.google.com/search?q=inland+ship) seems to be a Dutch term. In English IMO it must be sea-going to be a ship. Are flat-bottom boats sea-worthy? – ChrisW Nov 27 '14 at 21:48
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    Here [it is carrying **one** ship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin#mediaviewer/File:MV_Blue_Marlin_carrying_USS_Cole.jpg); ships cannot typically be stacked. – ChrisW Nov 27 '14 at 21:49
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    That Youtube video and therefore those barges are presumably made by Veka, who say of themselves on their web site, "VEKA supplies **inland navigation vessels** and **seagoing ships**". That is a cool feature of the *MV Blue Marlin*, that it submerges so that its cargo can float on and float off. – ChrisW Nov 27 '14 at 22:25
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    Okay, I think it is clear that the [definition of ship varies](http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-197783,00.html), perhaps regionally. Quibbling over which conflicting definition should be preferred sounds like a great use of chat, but no more comments please. – Oddthinking Nov 27 '14 at 23:02
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    @LorenPechtel - It doesn't appear to be carrying ships, but rather _pieces_ of ships. On the left side, there appear to be 5 sets of superstructure on top of the stack of hulls. They're components being transported to somewhere for final assembly. – Compro01 Nov 28 '14 at 12:20
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    @LorenPechtel The barges are not necessarily designed to be stackable *per se* but, they're almost flat-bottomed (the pontoons at the bottom are completely flat-bottomed). Each barge will be sitting on a set of cradles that are resting on the deck of the barge below. – David Richerby Nov 28 '14 at 16:03
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    @Compro01 They're not quite components: they're river boats that have had their cabs taken off so they stack better. The boats themselves aren't capable of making voyages across the ocean so they're put on top of an ocean-going ship for delivery. – David Richerby Nov 28 '14 at 16:04
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    @LorenPechtel: And, on the weight issue, remember that ships are designed to carry very heavy cargoes. Without that cargo on board the strength needed to carry that cargo is enough to support another barge. – Jack Aidley Nov 29 '14 at 10:11
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    @ChrisW It's slightly confusing because the Blue Marlin image from the Wikipedia page seems to be on a smaller scale. But from the [Twisted Sifter](http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that-ships-other-ships/) link, it shows that the vessel was altered in 2004 to increase the free deck area from 7,215 m2 to 11,227 m2. – icc97 Nov 02 '17 at 23:22
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    See [this](https://youtu.be/mL4CB4SZieo) in action! – noobs Jan 16 '19 at 08:21
  • Those ships that the shipping ship is shipping do look like shipping ships, mind. – Shadur Dec 11 '22 at 16:44