''Solitaire'' is a large deep-sea pipe laying ship. It was at the time of conversion the world's largest

pipe-laying ship A pipelaying ship is a maritime vessel used in the construction of subsea infrastructure. It serves to connect oil production platforms with refineries on shore. To accomplish this goal a typical pipelaying vessel carries a heavy lift crane, used ...

at long (excluding pipe-laying apparatus) and . When fully operational she has a crew of 420, a pipe carrying capacity of 22,000 tonnes and a pipe lay speed of more than a day. The ship is owned by the Allseas Group, a Dutch pipelaying and marine construction firm with their headquarters in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

History

The ship was initially built in 1972 as a

bulk carrier A bulk carrier or bulker is a merchant ship specially naval architecture, designed to transport unpackaged bulk cargo—such as Grain trade, grain, coal, ore, steel coils, and cement—in its cargo holds. Since the first specialized bulk carrie ...

and launched as ''Trentwood'' by

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group and its automobile division is the prede ...

at their shipyard in

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...

, Japan. In 1992, Allseas acquired ''Trentwood'' for conversion into a pipelaying vessel. Allseas awarded the conversion contract to Sembawang Shipyards in Singapore on a lump sum basis; however, the contract was terminated in 1995. The ship was subsequently converted at the Swan Hunter yard on

Tyneside Tyneside is a List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, built-up area across the banks of the River Tyne, England, River Tyne in Northern England. The population of Tyneside as published in the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 774,891 ...

, United Kingdom. ''Solitaire'' laid her first pipe on Statoil's Europipe project in 1999. Allseas and

Sembcorp Sembcorp Industries is a Singaporean state-owned energy and urban development company. Sembcorp's marine division provided a variety of services, including the engineering and construction of offshore platforms for oil extraction, until it w ...

reached a settlement for the ''Solitaire'' arbitration in 2006. In 2006, while working on the Atwater Valley and Independence Trail projects in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

, ''Solitaire'' set new depth records, laying 10-inch pipeline in a water depth of and 24-inch pipeline in a water depth of . Among other ships, ''Solitaire'' laid the

Nord Stream 2 Nord Stream 2 (German language, German–English language, English mixed expression for "North Stream 2"; ) is a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany running through the Baltic Sea, financed by Gazprom and several European energy compani ...

gas pipeline in the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

in 2019—2020.

References

External links

* 2min , from Mighty Ships 1971 ships Ships of the Netherlands Crane vessels Pipe-laying ships {{ship-stub