the.com/tanker
A floating warehouse so vast you could park it and call it real estate
means A large ship, truck, or aircraft built to carry liquids or gases in bulk, especially oil or fuel.
from Built straight from "tank," the storage vessel, plus the agent-suffix "-er" that turns a thing into a thing-that-does. "Tank" itself arrived in English via Portuguese "tanque" (a pond or reservoir), possibly tracing back to an Indian word for a cistern — picked up by English speakers in India. The shipping sense bloomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when oil started moving by sea, and a vessel that was essentially a hull full of tanks became, simply, a tanker.
- sheer scale
- Largest were longer than the Empire State is tall
- slow stop
- Needs miles and minutes to fully halt
- crew count
- Often just twenty people run the whole behemoth
- too big
- Some couldn't fit through Suez or English Channel
- single hull
- Banned after spills birthed the double-hull mandate
exxon valdez — oil tanker that spilled 11 million gallons in alaska's prince william sound, 1989
prestige — oil tanker that broke apart off spain's coast, spilling 64,000 tons of fuel oil, 2002
mv hebei spirit — oil tanker hit by crane barge off south korea, leaked 10,500 tons of crude, 2007