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SS Grand Canyon State (T-ACS 3)

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Built and commissioned as cargo ship PRESIDENT POLK for American Presidents Line, the ship was converted to a crane ship in the mid-1980s and was placed in service as GRAND CANYON STATE on December 12, 1986. The ship was subsequently berthed at Alameda, Calif., capable of being fully activated within 5 days. By February 29, 2024, the National Defense Reserve Fleet inventory lists GRAND CANYON STATE not in the RRF roster but in the Retention category at the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet (Benicia), designated "Logistics Support", i.e., preserved as a material donor to sustain other Ready Reserve vessels rather than maintained for five-day activation.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard SS GRAND CANYON STATE. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

• Click here to view the list.

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SS GRAND CANYON STATE History:

SS GRAND CANYON STATE began life as the breakbulk/container liner SS PRESIDENT POLK for American President Lines. Her keel was laid at National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, San Diego, on March 20, 1964. She was launched on January 23, 1965 and delivered for APL service under a Maritime Administration contract on November 4, 1965. In step with the accelerating shift to containerization on trans-Pacific routes, she was rebuilt in 1973 to the C6-S-1qc container configuration and continued in APL employment into the early 1980s, when she was turned over to the Maritime Administration and laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet in 1982.

As the Navy and MARAD refined a concept for self-sustaining cargo discharge in damaged, austere, or undeveloped ports, PRESIDENT POLK was selected for conversion to an auxiliary crane ship. From October 1985 to October 1987, Dillingham Corporation in San Francisco executed the transformation to the C6-S-MA1qd crane-ship standard, adding three twin-boom pedestal cranes, reinforcing cargo decks and power distribution, and integrating the ship's gear with lighterage and alongside transfer procedures central to joint logistics over-the-shore (JLOTS). She was placed in service as SS GRAND CANYON STATE (T-ACS 3) on October 27, 1987, under Military Sealift Command control in the Ready Reserve Force.

Through the late 1980s and into the post-Cold War period, GRAND CANYON STATE kept a five-day readiness posture at the Ready Reserve Fleet outport in Alameda, California. MARAD inventory summaries across the era repeatedly list her at Alameda and, over time, reflect shifts between "Military Useful Retention" categorization and formal RRF status as program bookkeeping evolved. These documents place her in the West Coast crane-ship cluster that underwrote contingency surge sealift and provided a standing training venue for Navy and Army port-opening units.

After the 1990–1991 Gulf crisis cemented the value of self-sustaining discharge in theater, crane-ship upkeep and activation drills were institutionalized on the West Coast. While GRAND CANYON STATE's specific Gulf movements are not publicly detailed, she appears consistently in MARAD lists for Alameda in the 1990s and 2000s, and her peers' deployments during that war shaped the JLOTS doctrine she was built to support. In that context, the ship's routine included material inspections, crew musters, and pier-side cargo evolutions that kept reserve mariners and Navy Cargo Handling Battalions current on crane-ship interfaces.

On March 28, 2010, photography records the Alameda crane-ship line-up with GRAND CANYON STATE moored alongside her sisters - visual shorthand for her enduring home pattern. The following years brought the same cadence: preservation at Alameda punctuated by activation drills and targeted yard periods. On September 28, 2016, imagery shows SS ALGOL (T-AKR 287), USNS CAPELLA (T-AKR 293), and GRAND CANYON STATE together at Alameda, a snapshot of the West Coast surge sealift hub. Within that 2014-2017 window, Port of San Francisco dry-dock utilization records show GRAND CANYON STATE in Dry Dock #2 from October 31 to December 3, a maintenance period consistent with Ready Reserve hulls' cyclic docking and preservation requirements in the Bay Area.

Fleet cargo-handling exercises repeatedly used the ship as a working stage. In July 2015, during "Big LOTS-West" in Alameda, Army public-affairs imagery captured GRAND CANYON STATE getting underway during a sequence that qualified joint cargo teams for at-sea and pier-side interfaces. The event supported a generation of logisticians deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan where port constraints and contested infrastructure made JLOTS skills directly relevant. Two years later, on July 14-17, 2017, sailors of Navy Cargo Handling Battalion 14 hoisted containers from KEYSTONE STATE (T-ACS 1) to GRAND CANYON STATE while both were moored at Alameda Point, an opportunistic weekend evolution overseen by the 5th Navy Expeditionary Logistics Regiment that exercised unit-to-unit interoperability and gear checks on the craneships' twin-boom systems.

In early March 2018, GRAND CANYON STATE operated at Naval Base Guam within Commander, Task Force 75's portfolio of expeditionary logistics, a reminder that reserve hulls periodically execute real movements beyond drills. On March 8, 2018, DVIDS imagery documented NCHB-1 Det. Guam receiving a container from GRAND CANYON STATE on Apra Harbor's wharves. An aerial photograph one week later showed multiple Navy vessels in port supporting concurrent Seventh Fleet activities. Those port calls reflected Indo-Pacific logistics rhythms linking shipboard handling, pier operations, and onward movement to afloat or ashore nodes.

On July 18, 2019, Military Sealift Command ordered a no-notice "Turbo Activation" off California to test activation timelines and at-sea proficiency. GRAND CANYON STATE, sailing with GEM STATE (T-ACS 2) and KEYSTONE STATE (T-ACS 1), cleared Alameda within four days and conducted a three-day sea trial sequence that included restricted maneuvering, formation steaming, visual communications, and warfare-area drill sets - an end-to-end rehearsal of the processes that would apply in a surge sealift contingency. The activation formed part of a larger 2019 stress test that, by September, expanded to dozens of RRF and MSC hulls nationwide.

Photographs from September 28, 2016 and additional Bay-Area spotting thereafter continue to place GRAND CANYON STATE routinely at the Alameda outport between activations - alongside other surge sealift assets such as the SL-7 fast sealift ships - until a programmatic shift in the early 2020s changed her accounting status. By February 29, 2024, the National Defense Reserve Fleet inventory lists GRAND CANYON STATE not in the RRF roster but in the Retention category at the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet (Benicia), designated "Logistics Support", i.e., preserved as a material donor to sustain other Ready Reserve vessels rather than maintained for five-day activation.

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SS GRAND CANYON STATE Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me and show the GRAND CANYON STATE berthed at Alameda, Calif., on July 18, 2006.

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