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Military Cargo Ships Load In Wilmington, N.C.

Military Sealift Command Press Release

1/21/2003

Two U.S. military cargo ships USNS Regulus and USNS Denebola arrived at the Port of Wilmington today to load U.S. Marine Corps cargo as part the repositioning of U.S. forces in support of the President's war on terrorism.

Regulus and Denebola, both noncombatant Fast Sealift Ships, are nearly 950 feet long and can each carry about 150,000 square feet of rolling stock and containerized cargo. Shipboard ramps and cranes enable military equipment to be easily driven or hoisted onto the ship's multiple decks.

The ships each have a crew of 43 civilian mariners employed by a private company under contract to the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command which owns the ships. Federal civilian mariners and contractor-employed mariners have operated military cargo ships since the 1770s.

Ordinarily, Regulus and Denebola are kept in reduced operating status at berths in Norfolk, Va., and Staten Island, N.Y., respectively. The ships can be activated, fully crewed and underway to a loading port in just four days.

More than 95 percent of all equipment and supplies for a war or contingency operation move by sea on ships controlled by Military Sealift Command. When defense fuels are added, the amount of military cargo carried by sea becomes 97 percent.

Military Sealift Command, the ocean transportation provider for the Department of Defense, operates about 120 civilian-crewed, noncombatant ships around the world each day during peacetime. MSC ship missions vary from the transport and afloat prepositioning of defense cargo to underway replenishment and other direct support to Navy ships at sea and at-sea data collection for the U.S. military and other U.S. government agencies.