CMA CGM Christophe Colomb, the first Explorer-class container ship ordered by CMA CGM
Class overview
Builders	Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) and Samsung Heavy Industries, South Korea; Shanghai Jiangnan Changxing Heavy Industry, China
Operators	CMA CGM
Built	2009–
General characteristics
Type	Container ship
Tonnage	153,000–175,000 GT
Length	365–396 m (1,197 ft 6 in – 1,299 ft 3 in)
Beam	51 m (167 ft 4 in)
Draft	16 m (52 ft 6 in)
Installed power	Wärtsilä 14RT-flex96C (80,080 kW)
Propulsion	Single shaft; fixed-pitch propeller
Speed	24–25 knots (44–46 km/h; 28–29 mph)
Capacity	13,300–16,020 TEU

The Explorer class is a series of large container ships built for CMA CGM. The first five ships are 365 metres (1,197 ft 6 in) long with a nominal capacity of 13,830 TEU; the last three are larger, at 396 metres (1,299 ft 3 in) and 16,020 TEU, making them the world's largest container ships until the delivery of the Triple E class. Advanced simulators were built to help crews learn how to handle the new ships.^[1]

The ships are mostly named after explorers. Benjamin Franklin was not an explorer but made contributions to oceanography, Georg Forster was a naturalist and ethnologist who travelled with explorer James Cook, and Jules Verne was a novelist who wrote about explorations.

There exist four different ship types within the Explorer class.

• List of world's longest ships
• Triple E-class container ship