The world's longest ships are listed according to their overall length (LOA), which is the maximum length of the vessel measured between the extreme points in fore and aft. In addition, the ships' deadweight tonnage (DWT) and/or gross tonnage (GT) are presented as they are often used to describe the size of a vessel.

The ships are listed by type. Only ship types for which there exist a ship longer than 300 metres (1,000 ft) are included. For each type, the list includes current record-holders either as individual ships, ship classes or standard designs, up to four runner-ups, and all longer ships that have been scrapped.

The list does not include non-self-propelled floating structures such as the 488 m (1,601 ft) long

Traditional rigging may include square rigs and gaff rigs, usually with separate topmasts and topsails. It is generally more complex than modern rigging, which utilizes newer materials such as aluminum and steel to construct taller, lightweight masts with fewer, more versatile sails. Most smaller, modern vessels use the Bermuda rig. Though it did not become popular elsewhere until the twentieth century, this rig was developed in Bermuda in the seventeenth century, and had historically been used on its small ships, the Bermuda sloops.[citation needed]

Author and master mariner Joseph Conrad (who spent 1874 to 1894 at sea in tall ships and was quite particular about naval terminology) used the term "tall ship" in his works;[1] for example, in The Mirror of the Sea in 1906.[2]

Henry David Thoreau also references the term "tall ship" in his first work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, quoting "Down out at its mouth, the dark inky main blending with the blue above. Plum Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and the distant outline broken by many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky." He does not cite this quotation, but the work was written in 1849.