Turns out things are getting more and more humongous at sea. Check out these behemoths that sailed into a U.S. commercial port in Virginia earlier this month. Said to be the largest cranes to operate in the U.S., these Chinese-made gantry monsters are part of a trend to accommodate “increasingly mammoth container ships that underpin international trade.”
International shipping companies are using larger but fewer container ships to save money, creating an arms races of sorts as ports try to make room for the biggest and baddest ships coming their way. To accommodate such large leviathans, ports are doing everything from dredging deeper channels in Georgia to elevating bridges to allow access to New York City-area ports.
The new cranes stand a whopping 170 feet tall and will be able to reach across a vessel that’s 26 containers wide to grab precious cargo that includes everything from furniture and automobile parts to Appalachian logs.
Can you imagine these puppies sailing into Westeros to snatch up the Iron Throne?