Meet The New Guinness World Record Breaking (Lego) Ship: M/V Jubilee Seaways

lifeboat aboard the world’s largest lego ship.. the DFDS Ferry Jubilee Seaways.

Two weeks & over a million bricks built by 7,000 people in 21 countries all over DFDS culminated in an official Guinness World Record for Largest LEGO Ship (supported by a steel frame) in Copenhagen on 17 August 2016.

It’s UK based ferry operator DFDS Seaways’ 150th anniversary the company’s engineers wanted to build something a bit special.

Inspired by the record-breaking exploits of Olympians in Rio, as well as fond memories of Cheryl Baker and Kriss Akabusi, we decided that we’d like to become record breakers” said DFDS spokesperson Catherine Jowett, “so we decided to stick to what we know best, ships, only this time we set aside heavy steel and used Legos!”

The ship, christened Jubilee Seaways in honour of DFDS’s anniversary, is now built and on a tour of Europe, starting at the Tall Ships Regatta this weekend, and returning to the UK in October.

The ship was designed by Jesper Aagesen, Head of New Building at DFDS. He decided to base it on a futuristic ferry concept, rather than building it to resemble one of our ferries.

The company sent out boxes and boxes of LEGO bricks to all of our offices, where they were formed into the larger building blocks (consisting of 48 bricks each) that would eventually make up Jubilee Seaways. Once these larger blocks were made, they were put together by LEGO artist Warren Elsmore and his team to create the record-breaking ship as it exists today.

Jubilee Seaways – Facts and Stats

Jubilee Seaways was built by 7,000 DFDS colleagues
These colleagues were spread across 75 locations in 20 countries
The whole ship, plus the trucks, cars and other details consists of over a million LEGO bricks
Jubilee Seaways is 12m long, meaning it’s big enough to enter the Tall Ships races!
At its tallest point, Jubilee Seaways is 2.72m high
The ship took over 900 person hours to build