Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World

Epilogue

EPILOGUE THE U.S. NAVY’S T-AKR-CLASS FAST SEALIFT SHIPS The full story of the logistical effort behind the invasion of Iraq by Allied forces in the spring of 2003 will likely not be known in full for many years; perhaps all the details will never be known. One important fact at the conclusion of the Sea-Land story is that a major role in transporting equipment and supplies from the United States to the Middle East fell to an eight-vessel fleet of supply ships that the U.S. Navy designates its T-AKR class of fast sealift ships. When they were built in 1972, they bore names like SeaLand McLean and Sea-Land Galloway. The Navy acquired the eight ships during two different fiscal years, six in fiscal year 1981 and two in fiscal year 1982. One can likely conclude that were it not for the Reagan administration’s policy of making substantially increased funds available for defense expenditures during the early 1980s, a more budgetminded Navy might have been less inclined to purchase the high-speed container ships. Once the ships were conveyed to the Navy, a major rehabilitation program was developed to adapt the vessels for their new role. Basically, they were converted from cellular container ships into roll-on, roll-off (ro/ro) equipment carriers, with multiple decks, linked by ramps, built in open hull spaces where containers were once stowed. Four onboard cranes were also installed to hoist equipment on and off ship, while the deck area between the dual superstructures was configured so it could serve as a landing pad for helicopters . Three U.S. shipyards handled the conversions: National Steel and Shipbuilding in San Diego, California; Pennsylvania Shipbuilding in Chester, Pennsylvania; and Avondale Shipyards in New Orleans, Louisiana. Despite all this heavy reconstruction, though, the eight ships have retained the same basic profile they featured when they entered Sea-Land service in 1973. The vessels are owned by the Navy but operated by contract civilian crews for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC). Bay Ship Management currently holds the management contract for the ex-SL-7s. One can distinguish civilian-operated MSC Navy ships from other Navy tonnage by the blue and yellow bands painted atop their funnels. Other shapes and styles of cargo and supply vessels that are painted ‘‘Navy gray’’ but feature red, white, and blue funnel bands are owned by the Maritime Administration and are part of a sixty-eight-vessel Ready Reserve Force that the federal government also maintains for defense-related assignments. Each of the eight former SL-7s is typically maintained in layup status by a permanent crew of eighteen but is capable of being fully activated in ninety-six hours. The eighteen permanent crewmembers are then supplemented by twenty-four others for a full complement of forty-two. It has been estimated that because of both its carrying capacity and its speed, a single T-ARK can perform sealift work that would require the services of 116 smaller and slower World War II–era Liberty ships. In keeping with Navy traditions, the eight T-AKR vessels are identified by the name of the first vessel of the class to be commissioned. The former SL-7s are thus called the Algol class—USNS Algol itself being the former Sea-Land Exchange, the SL-7 that still holds the transatlantic speed record for cargo ships, and is second only to the United States for the fastest crossing by any conventional merchant ship. To give a sense of the kind of missions the Navy has asked the former SL-7s to carry out, the following examples are instructive: In early 1999, USNS Antares—the former Sea-Land Galloway—called at Beaumont, Texas, and there loaded fifty-four pieces of rolling stock, twenty-five helicopters, and a number of military containers. The vessel then steamed north to Wilmington, North Carolina, and took on more containers, plus nine pieces of rolling stock and fifteen additional helicopters. On February 12, 1999, Antares put to sea and arrived in the port of Rijeka, Croatia, on February 28. The supplies the vessel was carrying were to support U.S. troops participating in Operation Joint Command in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In early January 2003, USNS Denebola—the former Sea-Land Resource —was activated and later that month made a voyage from Wilmington, Delaware, to the Persian Gulf with supplies for the Second Marine Expeditionary Force. Denebola then steamed...