The story of "Project Azorian" and the Hughes Glomar Explorer (the ship this crane was first used to construct) is a Wikipedia hole perfectly sized for a Saturday and some coffee. Well worth reading if you haven't before:
This featured in one of Charles Stross's novels, too - The Jennifer Morgue.
Fun anecdote that Gen-X Baltimoreans may recall from youth - "chessy" was also the name of a myth about yet another prehistoric-esque aquatic beast that swam in the Chesapeake Bay waters (1). Silly Baltimore:)
I wonder how many super yachts are actually destroyers.
None; modern super yachts are usually on the order of hundreds of tons, while destroyers displace nearly ten thousand tons.
Some super yachts are bigger than destroyers. The longest is 590 ft long and 13,136 tons. The biggest is 20,000 tons. The top ten are all bigger than 10,000 tons.
Warships and yachts are totally different vessels, there is no place on the latter for sensors or weapons.
There are plenty of sensors on yachts. Hell, my father’s dingy has a sensor on it.
So 'big crane does big jobs for anyone willing to pay for it, including government' is news?
It was originally built for a black project. Useful for other things subsequently, obviously.