History Supreme is a super-yacht commissioned by a mysterious Malaysian billionaire and designed by controversial artist Stuart Hughes. It is claimed to be the world’s most expensive yacht, but most don’t even believe it exists.
The story of the yacht is quite twisted. It originally made news headlines over a decade ago, when luxury jeweler and designer Stuart Hughes announced that he had spent three years working on it, after being commissioned by a Malaysian businessman who preferred to remain anonymous. The yacht was priced at a massive £3 million, or $4.8 billion. Photos of the vessel started going viral online and news outlets covered the topic extensively, but no one ever saw the yacht in person.
When you google the photos, they are the same ones that were released by Hughes in 2011 and are still on his website.
The History Supreme is supposed to be a 100-foot-long yacht made with around 100,000 kilograms of solid gold and platinum. Elements like the deck, dining area, rails, and even the anchor are supposedly made with these precious metals. The main sleeping quarters are decorated with platinum, the walls are made of “meteoric stone” and shavings from a genuine T-Rex bone.
These details are quite difficult to wrap your head around. We don’t know anything about its performance, fuel consumption, or capacity.
Stuart Hughes himself spoke about his work on History Supreme numerous times, and, even though he never revealed who the buyer was, he hinted at Robert Kuok, the richest man in Malaysia and the second-richest in Southeast Asia. He has a net worth of $11 billion at the time of this writing, but in 2011 Forbes estimated his fortune was around $12.5 billion. Why would someone put a third of their wealth into a ridiculously extravagant yacht?
When the yacht was revealed, the Italian boat manufacturer Baia Yachts issued a statement claiming that the photos posted on Stuart Hughes’ website were stolen from its website and posted without permission. However, those same photos are still up on Hughes’ website, along with the description and head-spinning price of the History Supreme yacht.
There are those who call the History Supreme the biggest hoax in the history of the boating industry, and with no evidence of the yacht’s existence.
