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MV Cape Decision (T-AKR 5054)

Sorry, no coat of arms available.

MV Cape Decision at Bremerhaven, Germany, on February 12, 2025. Photo by Thoralf Doehring.

MV CAPE DECISION was originally built in Sweden as MV TOMBARRA in 1973. Acquired by the US Maritime Administration in 1985, she was renamed CAPE DECISION 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 DECISION. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

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MV CAPE DECISION History:

MV CAPE DECISION began her life in the early 1970s as a commercial roll-on/roll-off and container vessel and only later became a U.S. strategic sealift ship. Her story starts at Eriksbergs Mekaniska Verkstads A/B on the Lindholmen yard in Gothenburg, Sweden, where her keel was laid in 1972 as the con-ro TOMBARRA for the Norwegian company Wilh. Wilhelmsen. She was completed and delivered on August 30, 1973, as yard number 664.

From delivery in 1973 through the mid-1980s, the ship traded commercially under the name TOMBARRA. She was one of a small family of five con-ro vessels - TRICOLOR, TOMBARRA and TARAGO for Wilh. Wilhelmsen, together with BARRANDUNA for Swedish owner Transatlantic and LALANDIA for the East Asiatic Company - that replaced older tonnage on the long Europe-Australasia and Europe-New Zealand routes. These ships combined a container capacity of about 1,320 TEU with roll-on/roll-off decks and were used in Wilhelmsen-led liner consortia that evolved into the Barber Blue Sea and ScanCarriers systems, linking North European ports such as Hamburg, Rotterdam and Le Havre with destinations in Australasia and the Pacific.

During this commercial phase, TOMBARRA's movements can be traced in part through port reports and photographs. In September 1975, she was photographed moored pierside at Hamburg, Germany, as a Wilhelmsen con-ro, reflecting the ship's role in the expanding North Europe-overseas trades of the mid-1970s. In France, the port authority journal for Bordeaux records that the new roll-on/roll-off facilities at the deep-water terminal of Le Verdon were inaugurated on June 23, 1976, when TOMBARRA made the first ro-ro call there, demonstrating the utility of stern-ramp ships for ports that had invested in modern ro-ro berths.

Company magazines and recollections from Wilhelmsen's fleet history show that in the later 1970s, the ship continued to work intensive liner schedules under the Barber Blue Sea brand, carrying vehicles, containers and break-bulk cargo on long rotations that included European ports, calls in the Mediterranean and Middle East, and destinations in Australasia and the Pacific. In 1976 and 1978, TOMBARRA appears in Wilhelmsen's internal publications as a regular participant in Barber services and as the subject of a Norwegian television feature filmed while she lay alongside at Flushing (Vlissingen) in the Netherlands, an indication of how unusual large con-ro vessels still were for the general public at that time. Other contemporary material places her at Fremantle in Western Australia in 1978 and at Rozenburg in the Rotterdam area in the early 1980s, still under Wilhelmsen ownership and Norwegian registry.

By the mid-1980s, the ship's career took a turn toward military service. In early 1985, Barber Steamship Lines, which managed Wilhelmsen's con-ro vessels in U.S. trade, concluded a contract with Bethlehem Steel Corporation's Sparrows Point shipyard near Baltimore to refit five foreign-flag ships - BARRANDUNA, LALANDIA, TARAGO, TOMBARRA and TRICOLOR - for potential use in the U.S. Navy's Ready Reserve Force. The work, valued at about 25 million dollars, involved bringing the ships up to U.S. regulatory standards and adapting them for rapid activation as military vehicle carriers.

On October 10, 1985, ownership of TOMBARRA formally passed from Barber Steamship to the U.S. Maritime Administration. The vessel status card records that on that date the ship, still bearing official number 684,098, was delivered at the James River Reserve Fleet as a purchased asset and renamed CAPE DECISION. The card notes that she was of foreign construction, built by Eriksberg M/V AB and delivered originally to Wilh. Wilhelmsen, and that she was now under the U.S. flag with the same principal dimensions and displacement.

After acquisition, CAPE DECISION entered the Ready Reserve Force, one of a group of five similar CAPE D-class roll-on/roll-off ships - CAPE DUCATO (T-AKR 5051), CAPE DOUGLAS (T-AKR 5052), CAPE DOMINGO (T-AKR 5053), CAPE DECISION and CAPE DIAMOND (T-AKR 5055) - managed by the Maritime Administration but earmarked for rapid activation under Military Sealift Command control in a crisis. All five ships were eventually based at Charleston, South Carolina, in Reduced Operating Status "ROS-5", meaning they were maintained with a small caretaker crew and could be brought to full operational status within five days.

Through the second half of the 1980s, CAPE DECISION underwent the necessary conversion and maintenance work to support this new role. Bethlehem's Sparrows Point yard and other East Coast facilities modified the ship's cargo handling arrangements and installed military communications and support systems suited to carrying U.S. Army and Marine Corps equipment. By the end of the decade, she was lying in the reserve fleet but maintained in operational condition, with a notional activated crew of 27 civilian mariners - nine officers and eighteen unlicensed seafarers - ready to be called up under commercial contract.

CAPE DECISION's first major activation came in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. U.S. Navy records summarizing "changes in the status of ships" note that the roll-on/roll-off ship CAPE DECISION was activated on August 29, 1990, as part of the surge of Ready Reserve Force vessels for OPERATION DESERT SHIELD and, later, OPERATION DESERT STORM. She was one of a large group of RRF and commercially chartered ships called up to move heavy equipment from U.S. ports to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf region.

During the Gulf War sealift, CAPE DECISION operated under the control of Military Sealift Command, carrying vehicles, ammunition and other cargoes along routes that generally led from the U.S. East Coast across the Atlantic and Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. A U.S. Philatelic Society compilation of Desert Shield/Desert Storm shipping lists CAPE DECISION among the roll-on/roll-off ships chartered or controlled for the campaign, and a U.S. Navy photographic record shows the ship at Subic Bay in the Philippines during the Desert Storm period, lowering her anchor while the ammunition ship USNS KILAUEA (T-AE 26) lay moored alongside a pier in the background. The Subic Bay photograph underlines that not all Gulf War sealift voyages went directly into the Gulf. Some ships staged through existing U.S. logistics hubs in the western Pacific, with cargoes or ship movements coordinated across a global network.

After the coalition cease-fire in February 1991, the same sealift network had to be used in reverse to bring equipment home or reposition it for future contingencies. On April 11, 1991, Military Sealift Command initiated OPERATION DESERT SORTIE, a campaign to remove U.S. personnel and materiel from Southwest Asia. CAPE DECISION was again included among the ships used, taking part in the back-haul phase that redistributed vehicles and cargo to the United States and to other prepositioning sites. Once her assigned voyages were completed, she returned to an American port, was deactivated and resealed in the Ready Reserve Force.

In the immediate post-war period, CAPE DECISION continued to play a role in the gradual modernization of U.S. logistics systems. An article on in-transit visibility in a U.S. Army logistics journal notes that in December 1993, the first prepositioned ship to be equipped with active, full-data radio-frequency tags on its cargo was CAPE DECISION, at the Port of Charleston, South Carolina. A team from the Project Manager for Ammunition Logistics and from the Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM) went aboard to tag ammunition containers using standard transportation documentation formats. The experiment was an early step in developing the tracking technologies that later became routine in operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Maritime Administration annual reports from the mid-1990s show CAPE DECISION among a group of roll-on/roll-off ships that collectively accumulated thousands of "ship operating days" on exercises, cargo movements and readiness operations as the RRF concept was refined. The 1994 and 1998 annual reports emphasize the contribution of these ships to contingency planning and training, indicating that CAPE DECISION was activated periodically for tests and missions rather than being left idle.

A U.S. Army field manual on strategic deployment published in 1996, describes CAPE DECISION and her near-sister CAPE DOUGLAS as two Cape D-class roll-on/roll-off ships operating in an Army Prepositioning Afloat program. The manual notes their 65-ton capacity side and stern ramp and their ability to carry up to 554 standard 20-foot ISO containers on their ro-ro decks, underlining their importance as flexible carriers for both vehicles and containerized equipment. By the late 1990s, CAPE DECISION had therefore evolved from a simple reserve asset into a key component of afloat prepositioning concepts.

During the late 1990s, the ship remained homeported at Charleston. MARAD's 1998 annual report remarks that CAPE DECISION, together with other roll-on/roll-off ships, completed a combined total of 8,975 days of operating readiness that year, a figure that includes time at sea on activations and the days they were maintained in a status above minimum lay-up. In practice, this meant that CAPE DECISION periodically left Charleston for brief activation voyages, sea trials and exercises intended to keep crew and systems practiced in ro-ro operations.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, all five Cape D-class ships were activated in support of OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM. Open sources summarizing the class's history state that they were all used to move U.S. military unit equipment such as tanks, helicopters and wheeled vehicles to overseas theaters. While detailed itineraries for CAPE DECISION in this period are not publicly listed, the class description makes clear that she contributed to the surge of heavy equipment to Southwest and Central Asia in the early 2000s.

One deployment from this era is documented in some detail. On April 29, 2006, Stars and Stripes reported that MV CAPE DECISION, operating for Military Sealift Command, had recently called at the port of Szczecin in Poland to deliver combat equipment belonging to the Polish armed forces. The article notes that the 681-foot roll-on/roll-off ship discharged more than 49,000 square feet of cargo at Szczecin, including over 160 trucks, six helicopters, several tanks, numerous trailers and more than 100 containers of supplies. This cargo was linked to Poland's participation in U.S.-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2003, U.S. ships had transported large volumes of Polish equipment to and from the Middle East, and CAPE DECISION's late-April 2006 visit formed part of that support.

Throughout the 2000s, CAPE DECISION also continued to undergo periodic overhauls and maintenance periods at U.S. East Coast shipyards. A photograph taken on September 30, 2012 shows the ship inbound on the Delaware River, identified as being "of Norfolk, Va. inbound Delaware River...bound for drydock", which suggests a yard period at a facility in the Philadelphia-Camden area. Other images from the National Archives and commercial photo agencies capture the ship moored at the North Locust Point Marine Terminal in Baltimore, tied up at a pier while under Military Sealift Command charter, confirming that she was regularly brought into port terminals for loading, discharge and maintenance in addition to her time in reserve at Charleston.

In September 2019, the U.S. Transportation Command and Maritime Administration executed a large-scale "turbo activation" exercise to test the ability of the Ready Reserve Force to surge sealift capacity. Defense press coverage of the exercise lists MV CAPE DECISION among the ships activated, described as a roll-on/roll-off vessel out of Charleston, South Carolina, displacing 34,617 tons. Together with other RRF vessels, CAPE DECISION was brought from reserve to operational status and sent to sea, providing a real-world demonstration of how quickly the aging sealift fleet could be mobilized.

In the early 2020s, CAPE DECISION remained in service in the RRF. Analyses of the U.S. defense maritime industrial base and of strategic sealift continue to list her among MARAD's special-mission or surge sealift ships, grouped with other CAPE-class ro-ro vessels. AIS-based vessel-tracking services routinely showed her moored at Charleston when not activated, confirming that she continued to be maintained on the U.S. East Coast rather than being laid up permanently at another reserve fleet site.

The ship's most visible recent work has been connected with the reinforcement of U.S. forces and equipment in Europe following renewed tension with Russia. German and international reporting in early 2025 describe a series of U.S. roll-on/roll-off ships delivering tanks and other heavy equipment to Bremerhaven, Germany, as part of rotational deployments and exercises. CAPE DECISION was one of the vessels involved. Photos captured her at Bremerhaven on February 12, 2025, moored alongside with a full load of military vehicles visible on deck, and again on February 17, 2025, as she departed the port.

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MV CAPE DECISION Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me and show MV CAPE DECISION at Bremerhaven, Germany, on February 12, 2025.

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