Military news (.com)? … says the Navy is proposing scrapping one of the two hospital ships. A cost cutting move to ‘improve’ the force. Despite the ship is run by volunteers… I don’t even know if a Uniform has been on there for … how long? Vietnam?
Here is the link.
Wrong lots of active duty navy when they crew up. Usually a few 0-6s all the way down to E-3s. I think there is a permanent crew of 50 or so the rest come from balboa or portsmouth naval hospitals.
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well, that’s something to know. I’d considered volunteering for a while aboard the Mercy but never did. They wanted assistant engineers and i’d been led to believe it was touch and go for their crewing… non-the-less, i don’t see how one or even three of those ships would be sufficient in the next ‘real’ war.
You’re thinking of Mercy Ships. The thread is about the USNS Mercy and Comfort. US government hospital ships.
Lets assume there is only one each Mercy and Comfort. in which caseI knew they had some military affiliation but I didn’t realize they had any military crewmen, like some other govt. ships.
I think you’ve gotten yourself thoroughly confused now. The USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort are entirely government, being run by Military Sealift Command, crewed by MSC CIVMARS and manned up with military when they’re sailing. The USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort are both converted oil tankers.
Mercy Ships is an entirely different organization that has no government affiliation and is run off of donations by volunteers. They currently only have one ship, the MV Africa Mercy, which is a converted ferry.
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I think youre thinking of https://www.mercyships.org/who-we-are/our-ships/. When the mercy does humanitarian trips they usually partner with med schools and dental schools. The mercy is underway right now for Pacific partnership I would assume she has students and volunteers onboard in addition to naval personnel but I do not know if they did this year.
thanks Louisd…, got it.
Volunteers? Those are some of the highest paid ships in MSC. It was without a doubt the highest paid ship I’ve been on in almost 20 years.
The USNS Mercy and Comfort were San Clemente class tankers (660,000 barrels) the Rose City and the Worth, operated by Apex Marine before they were converted into hospital ships in, I believe, the late 80’s. Here is a photo of the Rose City in its original configuration.
USNS Comfort ex Rose City on Shipspotting.com:
http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=355247
Note the open lifeboats still retained.
That picture of the Rose City was taken some time in the mid 1970’s.
So what? She spends 99% of her time at the dock.
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