The twin-screw ship was laid in August 1975 for the Societé Maritime Shell, based in Paris, in the shipyard Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire. Its main dimensions were adapted to the French oil ports of Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille and Cap Antifer near Le Havre . The handover to the owner took place in June 1976. At the time of delivery, the Batillus was one of the largest ships in the world. The main area of operation of the ship was the route between the Persian Gulf and the two suitable French ports. In the wake of the great tanker crisis, the only seven-year-old Batillus was launched from August 22, 1983 to November 8, 1985 in Vestnes, Norway. From there, the last voyage of the ship led via a bunker call in Singapore to a demolition operation in Kaoshiung on Taiwan, which it reached on December 28, 1985.
technical description
The Post Suezmax ship had an overall length of 414.22 meters. The length between the perpendiculars was 401.08 meters. It was 63.00 meters wide. The cargo tanks were divided into nine middle and 14 side tanks. The largest central tank had a capacity of 34,971 cubic meters. The entire deck machinery was operated hydraulically. The core of these deck systems were mooring winches and two 16-ton deck cranes for transferring the hose connections. The loading oil system was intended to handle three different types of cargo at the same time. The steam turbine-driven pumps achieved an output of 6000 cubic meters of crude oil per hour. A computer was responsible for monitoring the charging process, which was a novelty at the time. Among other things, he constantly monitored the position of the valves in the cargo lines, the draft and, using built-in sensors, the tensions in the ship's structure.
drive
As a drive, the Batillus had two Stal-Laval steam turbines produced by the shipyard, each with an output of almost 23,800 kilowatts, which worked via a transmission gear on two five-blade propellers at a maximum speed of 86 revolutions per minute.
