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I could also call this “other peoples photos” but here is yesterday’s arrival of the hospital ship as seen from three friends’ perspectives.
Phil Little took this, and referred to it as his Normandy landing shot, an appropriate name given that this asset, arriving with a large support group, marks a surge, a counteroffensive against the invisible foe. Note that the top of WTC1 is obscured, as is most of the VZ Bridge, center right.
To reiterate, Comfort‘s 1000 beds and 12 operating rooms will take overflow from other hospitals, overflow of NON-covid-19 patients. Click here for much more info on the ship, medical facilities and operating life. Click here for video of the hospital ship arriving.
The flotilla is almost to her berth, here passing Hudson Yards.
Renee Lutz Stanley took this one from a pier south of Intrepid while trying very hard to practice social distancing.
Phil calls this the “turn-in.”
This last two come from David Silver, taken looking south.
Cruise ships and hospital ship are roughly the same color, but that color gives a profoundly different impression in each. Comfort with its relatively few “port holes” and glass is a place of intensive inward examination, a place apart, one hopes, for healing.
Many thanks to Phil, Renee, and David for use of these photos. Please do continue social distancing and hand-washing.
At 0900 and a few minutes, USNS Comfort arrived at the Narrows. Ava M was one of six McAllister units meeting her there to assist.
USACE, NYPD, and other agencies saw her in as well.
, 
She passed the USCG station and
and the old hospital complex.
Another USNS vessel in the port was Watkins.
From this point off Bayonne, we’ll pick up the story tomorrow.
All photos, WVD.
Note: Tomorrow I may slip my post time a little; you’ll understand, I hope, tomorrow. Mentioning hope, check out this link to learn about, among other things, an iron cow!! Hope, SS Hope, was born of USS Consolation, AH-15.
Anyone know the US first hospital ship? When did USNS Comfort last call in the sixth boro? Answers follow below.
I used the photo below just over five years ago in a post about Red Cross ships; tanker SS Rose City became USNS Comfort in 1985. Study the photo and compare it to the current iteration.
I’m thrilled Mercy has been activated in the west and Comfort will arrrive here, but only a very short time ago there was serious consideration to mothball and maybe scrap at least one of these vessels. Also, as positive as they are, what they are not is panaceas. Mechanical, electrical, and other bugs need to be sorted out on the ships. Crews need to resolve dynamics; after all, even two months ago all those crews were happily working elsewhere, and as USNS ships, they have hybrid civilian/military crews.
And the US first hospital ship, establishing a “makeover” tradition, began life in Cape Girardeau, MO in 1859 as a Mississippi River steamer. The Confederacy transformed it into a barracks, the US army captured it, and she was made into a hospital ship. I believe she carried the name Red Rover throughout all three lives. Nursing staff on USS Red Rover were members of the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
Click here for a ketch used to evacuate wounded going back to 1803. What were we involved with 217 years ago?
USNS Comfort made her last call in NYC was in September 2001, and I honestly didn’t recall that. Does anyone have photos to share from that deployment?
Finally, I’ve mentioned it before, but back in 1980 SS Rose City had a young crewman named John Moynihan, who wrote a noteworthy account of his hitch aboard the vessel. It’s a great book in itself; his father was a senator from New York.
Long ago and faraway, I boarded this hospital ship on a tributary of the Congo River; that it operated there at all is a scintilla of evidence that even a dictator can do good things by his subjected peoples. I’m unable to learn the disposition of this ship, SS Mama Yemo, but a little researching did lead me to understand that it was developed by a US doctor, William Close, whom I’d love to learn more about.
SS Rose City photo thanks to William Lafferty; sentiments and filtering of info by WVD, who thanks you for keeping your distance.
Hats off to the folks dredging USNS Comfort‘s berth even as we read.
And finally, a request . . . if you get photos of her arrival tomorrow, consider sharing them with this blog.
I re-learned an acronym . . . LCTC, or large car and truck carrier. These included the Wallenius Wilhelmsen orange ROROs with names beginning with T, like Topeka, Tortugas . . . and so on. The green ones are HERO type, smaller and more efficient.
She’s 755′ x 106′ and by tomorrow she could be squeezing through the original Panama Canal locks.
I wonder if these bow ports see water in rough seas.
All photos, WVD.
Here’s another LCTC, Torino.
And as to continuing impact of Covid-19 on jobs, here‘s info on an announcement from a few days ago of temporary layoffs of WW employees. I’m wondering if that includes those ILA folks in port who drive the cars and trucks off these ships.
Last post I titled this way was almost 10 years ago here.
These photos from a few days ago show no sense of the unprecedentedly different harbor.
Since Margaret assisted fleet mate Lois Ann L with barge Philadelphia off crude tanker Ionic Artemis, they’ve separated, each headed out in different directions.
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All photos, WVD, who wishes everyone health.
As the sixth boro prepares to receive USNS Comfort,
on the other side of the continent earlier this week, USNS Mercy departed port of San Diego. No specific ETA is reported as yet for either vessel, as . . well . . . preps need to be made.
U.S.N.S. MERCY T-AH 19.
Seen leaving for the Port of Los Angeles to alleviate the burden on local hospitals there dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic by taking non-coronavirus afflicted patients.
► ONLY REPRODUCE WITH CREDIT GIVEN TO W. MICHAEL YOUNG ◄
Launched as SS Worth MA-299 on 1 July 1975 (in San Diego, California) and entered service as a hospital ship on 8 November 1986 (to US Navy).
Homeport in San Diego, California, she measures 894′ x 106.’
She is propelled by two boilers, two GE turbines, one shaft, 24,500hp (18.3MW) and can cruise at 17 knots. Her complement is as follows: 12 civilian and 58 military during Reduced Operating Status, and 61 civilian and 1,214 military during Full Operating Status. Her time to activate is 5 days
Photographed by W. Michael Young at San Diego, California on March 23, 2020.
© 2020 W. Michael Young
4629 Cass Street, PMB 78
San Diego CA 92109-2805
United States of America
► ONLY REPRODUCE WITH CREDIT GIVEN TO W. MICHAEL YOUNG ◄
As it turns out, Mercy went just outside the harbor and anchored, to complete preparations before deployment. There are many closeup photos of the preps at the pier in the link in the previous sentence.
Also, click here to see a 1985 photo of USNS Mercy being created out of SS Worth, a San Clemente-class tanker.
Many thanks to W. Michael Young for the Mercy photos; Comfort photo I took in Baltimore exactly 10 years ago this month. Both vessels were built by NASSCO in the mid-1970s.
And entirely unrelated: Has anyone ever seen El-Mahrousa, the 1865-launched Egyptian training ship?
Back in December, I posted a variation of the photo below. But that view didn’t allow me to see the bow.
Now I have: what an attractive boat!
Now that I see her bow and complete profile, I see how similar the hull is to Sea Hawk but maintains a functioning lower wheelhouse. It was too bad the froth obscured the Bludworth connection.
Updated photo of the ladder on the nose is below.
It was a pleasure to see the 1998 Sea Eagle light as I was out doing my exercise in social and actually physical distancing.
All photos, WVD, who wishes you all health.
Unrelated: Some mariners are trapped on their vessels, and likely not thrilled to be calling in the sixth boro.
Time gets away from me quite a lot. Notwithstanding the 50-degree temperatures and bursting blooms, it certainly does not feel like it, we’re several days into spring, and I’d intended this as my last winter’s day post, following up on another post from this Great Lakes mariner . . . maybe I should say great Great Lakes mariner. No matter, since I’m social distancing from my tugster editor these days.
From Sturgeon Bay, it’s Meredith Ashton and Fischer Hayden. Meredith Ashton once worked in the sixth boro as Specialist,not Specialist II.
From Milwaukee . . . it’s Neeskay, and
from Port Huron, it’s Manitou, which also had a New York chapter.
See the white stuff above?
Anyhow, many thanks to the captain Nemo of the inland seas.
Guess the port? The tug is Orgullo De Izabal [Pride of Izabal] , built in 2007 by Damen in Gorinchem, NL. She measures 72′ x 22.’
In the same port was AS Fiorelia, a small container vessel I believe I’ve seen in the sixth boro, just never–so far as I can determine–posted here. Note the container cranes. And the port is?
How’s this for the non-stealth sub. I’ve never seen one, but Joseph T said he traveled down to 100′ without “donning dive gear or calculating decompression tables.”
Boca Grande, a Kirby tug, and Seabulk Towing’s Condor . . . make this port of Miami, and Terminal H, according to Joseph. The tugs are 1100 hp and 6700 hp, respectively. Have you guessed the top two photos’ location yet?
Bayou Teche here secures the 403; farther down the dock, Oceania Sirena is about to depart. Bayou Teche is a 3000 hp Kirby boat about five years old.
So, the first two photos Joseph took in Santo Tomás de Castilla, Guatemala, heart of Garifuna land. Surprisingly, that bay was first colonized, unsuccessfully, by the Belgians!
Below, l to r, it’s Oasis of the Seas and Seven Seas Explorer, Joseph’s ride.
Many thanks for these photos, Joseph.
This follows such “something different” posts as Whatzit 41 and 39, Something Different 48 and Irene Aftermath 1 and 2. If you’re not familiar with the color coding, blue is for passenger vessels, pink is personal vessels, and aqua is tugboats. A circle means anchored or moored and an arrow means underway. These two groups of five then are passenger vessels, image copies last night about 1800.
In fact, from l to r and if one atop the other, top to bottom, they are Veendam, Zuiderdam, Nieuw Amsterdam, and Volendam. The other cluster is Anthem of the Seas, Mariner of the Seas, Celebrity Reflection, Celebrity Edge, and Nieuw Statendam.
Green is for cargo ships and red is tankers. The moving blue symbols (l to r) are Independence of the Seas, Harmony of the Seas, and Oasis of the Seas. The blue circles are (l to r) Symphony of the Seas, Emerald Princess, Crown Princess, Island Princess, and Regal Princess.
To add some drama to the top two images, let’s tally up the potential number of passengers on these vessels. Since I don’t know what the status of passengers on the vessels in the top two photos is, I’ll just give maximum capacity totals, passengers plus crew. Want to estimate? How many crew in the case these vessels have no paying passengers? Answer follows below., but please guess?
Adding to the strange clusters, how about destination given as “nowhere” or
“adrift”. There are some metaphors here . . . like this and this.
My totals . . . for the enumerated vessels in the top two photos . . . at capacity paying passengers . . . 86,535. And if all those vessels are crew only, there are still 22,331 onboard, folks not earning tips. If you’ve been on a cruise, which I have not, you can guess the general range of nationalities of these crew and what they do with their money.
As of this morning, the clusters are shuffling.
tugster: a waterblog 
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