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MV Cape Ducato (T-AKR 5051)

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MV CAPE DUCATO was originally built in Sweden as MV BARRANDUNA in 1972. Acquired by the US Maritime Administration in 1985, she was renamed CAPE DUCATO and assigned to MARAD's Ready Reserve Fleet. The ship is presently homeported in Charleston, SC., capable of being fully activated within 5 days.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard MV CAPE DUCATO. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

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MV CAPE DUCATO History:

MV CAPE DUCATO began her life as the Swedish-built roll-on/roll-off cargo ship BARRANDUNA. Ordered for the Barber/Transatlantic ro-ro system, she was constructed at the Eriksbergs Mekaniska Verkstads AB yard in Gothenburg, Sweden, a major Scandinavian shipbuilding center at the time. Launched as BARRANDUNA on March 15, 1972, she entered commercial service later that year as a large combination ro-ro and container carrier of around 207 meters length, built to move vehicles and general cargo rapidly on long-haul routes. Her design reflected the early 1970s shift in liner shipping toward high-speed, vehicle-capable tonnage: a broad beam, multiple vehicle decks connected by internal ramps, and container capacity on the weather deck, operated under the Swedish flag for Rederi AB Transatlantic and associated Barber lines.

During the 1970s, BARRANDUNA served on long-distance routes linking Europe with Australia and New Zealand as part of the ScanAustral / Barber consortium trades, which sought to capture the growing demand for fast vehicle and unitized cargo services to and from the Southern Hemisphere. Port records and contemporary shipping literature place her regularly on these routes; for example, she is documented calling at Napier, New Zealand, on December 8, 1979, as a ro-ro liner in scheduled service. Her employment on these trades made use of her high service speed and vehicle decks, allowing rapid turnaround in ports that were modernizing to handle ro-ro traffic.

In the early 1980s, BARRANDUNA also appeared in growing Europe-Middle East trade. A 1982 report of the International Association of Ports and Harbors notes that she was the first vessel employed in a new service to Dubai, with feeder links onward to Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Dammam, Bahrain and Kuwait, with an advertised transit time of just over two weeks from the European load port. This move into Gulf trades reflected the expansion of containerized and ro-ro services to oil-producing states during a period of high crude prices and large-scale infrastructure projects. Throughout this period, she remained a commercial liner vessel, rotating between European, Australasian and Gulf ports under Barber/Transatlantic management.

The ship's role changed fundamentally in the mid-1980s, when the U.S. government began buying relatively modern ro-ro vessels for the National Defense Reserve Fleet and its high-readiness subset, the Ready Reserve Force (RRF). On November 18, 1985, the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) purchased BARRANDUNA from Barber interests, renamed her CAPE DUCATO and designated her T-AKR-5051. She was assigned to the Ready Reserve Force and berthed at the National Defense Reserve Fleet site at Charleston, South Carolina, as part of the "CAPE D"-class of five sister vehicle cargo ships. In RRF service she was maintained in Reduced Operating Status (ROS-5), meaning a small caretaker crew kept her systems preserved at Charleston so she could be brought to full operational status within five days of activation, with Military Sealift Command (MSC) assuming operational control on activation.

From the late 1980s through the 1990s, CAPE DUCATO's day-to-day life was shaped by the logic of strategic sealift rather than commercial schedules. RRF ships like CAPE DUCATO were kept alongside in reserve fleet sites while undergoing continuous maintenance and regular sea trials to prove that they could meet their assigned activation timelines. During these years, the RRF as a whole was heavily used for major contingencies - Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM in the Persian Gulf, support for UN missions in Somalia, and the Haiti intervention - but publicly available summaries of those operations emphasize other "CAPE" ro-ros by name and do not clearly document an activation of CAPE DUCATO in those particular campaigns.

A clearly documented operational deployment came in 1998, when Hurricane Mitch - one of the most destructive storms ever to strike Central America - caused catastrophic flooding and infrastructure damage, particularly to roads and bridges in Honduras and Nicaragua. In response, the United States activated four RRF ships under MSC operational control to move heavy construction equipment and materials to the region. The first to arrive in Corinto, Nicaragua, was CAPE VINCENT (T-AKR 9666), carrying earth-moving machinery, trucks and tractors. Following her, CAPE DUCATO, CAPE EDMONT (T-AKR 5069) and CAPE VICTORY (T-AKR 9701) transported additional construction materials and engineering equipment to Central American ports, contributing to road and bridge reconstruction in the months after the storm. A Department of Defense press statement from December 1998 records that nearly 61,000 square feet of heavy construction equipment and vehicles were loaded aboard CAPE DUCATO alone, indicating a full utilization of her ro-ro decks for the humanitarian mission. This deployment showcased the dual-use character of the RRF: the same ro-ro capacity intended for wartime armored brigades was used here for bulldozers, dump trucks and other reconstruction assets.

After Hurricane Mitch, CAPE DUCATO returned to Charleston and resumed her ROS-5 status. MARAD and MSC continued to emphasize periodic "no-notice" activations, or "turbo activations", to test the readiness of ships like CAPE DUCATO. By the early 2000s, she was under commercial management contracts - in this period, companies such as Marine Transport Lines were tasked with day-to-day maintenance for specific RRF ships, CAPE DUCATO among them - while the ship herself remained government-owned and under MARAD custody when not activated.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom triggered a new round of large-scale sealift demand. Open-source summaries of the CAPE DUCATO-class note that all five ships of the class, including CAPE DUCATO, were activated in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, joining the surge of RRF tonnage used to move Army and Marine Corps equipment toward Southwest and Central Asian staging ports. While those summaries do not specify CAPE DUCATO's individual loading and discharge ports, they place her clearly within the cohort of high-capacity ro-ros tasked with carrying vehicles, containers and other outsized cargo in the early phases of the campaign.

In early 2003, CAPE DUCATO was again drawn into a major mobilization as the United States prepared for the invasion of Iraq under Operation Iraqi Freedom. Planning called for the 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Hood, to deploy as a heavy mechanized force, and a group of large ro-ro ships was tasked to carry its vehicles and equipment. In March 2003, CAPE DUCATO and CAPE DOUGLAS (T-AKR 5052) were identified as part of a six-ship force loading 4th Infantry Division equipment on the U.S. East Coast for onward movement to the theater.

At the same time, an overview of the 2003 RRF surge notes that nearly forty RRF vessels were activated, with all but three - CAPE DUCATO, CAPE LOBOS (T-AKR 5078) and CAPE LAMBERT (T-AKR 5077) - meeting their activation timelines, indicating that CAPE DUCATO's initial call-up coincided with a period of routine repairs that complicated her schedule even as she was drawn into the overall deployment.

In the years immediately following the initial invasion of Iraq, RRF ro-ros continued to support equipment rotations into and out of the Persian Gulf, although open sources tend to discuss these movements in aggregate rather than by individual ship. CAPE DUCATO remained in the East Coast sealift pool for this purpose. At the same time, she participated in at least one documented large-scale readiness event: a 2009 activation in which eleven RRF vessels were simultaneously called up under commercial operator Crowley. A Seafarers International Union account of that activation lists CAPE DUCATO and CAPE DECISION (T-AKR 5054) among the ships activated from the Port of Jacksonville, Florida. The activation required rapid crewing and ship preparation and served principally to verify the ships' material condition and responsiveness.

Throughout the 2010s, CAPE DUCATO continued in Reduced Operating Status at Charleston as one of the RRF's 4- and 5-day ro-ros. RRF management practices involved regular Coast Guard and classification-society inspections, planned maintenance availabilities at shipyards, and periodic sea trials during which the ship would leave the berth, run her propulsion plant at power and cycle cargo gear, before returning to reserve status. The detailed dates and yards for CAPE DUCATO's maintenance periods in this decade are not individually recorded in readily accessible open sources, but she appears regularly in published RRF lists and is cited in union publications as an active ship where U.S. merchant mariners sailed and upgraded their skills, implying recurring periods at sea for trials and short missions.

A particularly revealing episode occurred in September 2019, when U.S. Transportation Command ordered a large "turbo activation" to stress-test the aging sealift fleet. In that exercise, MSC and MARAD activated dozens of RRF vessels nearly simultaneously. A Defense News/Military Times overview of the event lists CAPE DUCATO as one of several Charleston-based ro-ro ships called up for the test. A detailed account by Seaward Marine Services, a contractor providing underwater hull inspection and cleaning, describes how dive teams were redirected on short notice "to Charleston in support of MV CAPE EDMONT and MV CAPE DUCATO turbo activations", emphasizing that both ships had to be brought up rapidly from reserve status, with diving teams ensuring that sea inlets, rudders and propellers were free of fouling and that underwater hull conditions would not impair the activation timeline. The exercise highlighted how CAPE DUCATO, by now nearly half a century old, remained an integral part of the U.S. surge sealift architecture.

Into the 2020s, CAPE DUCATO continued to appear in strategic assessments of U.S. sealift. The International Institute for Strategic Studies' "Military Balance 2024" lists her as one of the roll-on/roll-off vessels held within the National Defense Reserve Fleet and available to the U.S. Navy and MSC as strategic transport capacity, grouped with other "CAPE" ro-ros in the Atlantic and Gulf sealift pools. At the same time, the RRF overall, including CAPE DUCATO, became the subject of debate about fleet age, recapitalization costs and the readiness of U.S. surge sealift, with media and industry reports emphasizing that many of these ships now dated from the early 1970s.

Against that strategic background, CAPE DUCATO undertook a high-profile deployment to the Baltic in the summer of 2023, in the context of NATO reassurance measures and large-scale U.S. equipment movements linked to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On August 7, 2023, CAPE DUCATO entered the Port of Gdynia in Poland as a U.S. National Defense Reserve Fleet vehicle carrier, described in local maritime reporting as a "car carrier" belonging to the active reserve fleet of the United States. During this call, she took on fuel and loaded U.S. military vehicles and other equipment stored at the Gdynia Port Logistics Centre, reflecting Gdynia's growing role as a logistics hub for U.S. and allied forces on NATO's eastern flank. The visit was explicitly framed in Polish maritime and security commentary as a visible sign of U.S. military engagement in the Baltic Sea and Poland during ongoing operations to reinforce NATO and support Ukraine.

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MV CAPE DUCATO Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by Pascal Meyer and show MV CAPE DUCATO at Bremerhaven, Germany, on August 3, 2023.

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