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SS Cape Mohican (T-AKR 5065)

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Delivered as SS TILLIE LYKES to Lykes Bros Steamship Company in 1973, the ship was purchased by the Maritime Administration (MARAD) on September 13, 1986, and renamed SS CAPE MOHICAN (T-AKR 5065). Assigned to Military Sealift Command's Ready Reserve Force, the CAPE MOHICAN could be fully activated within 5 days if required. In July 2021, CAPE MOHICAN left her layberth in Alameda, Calif., under tow enroute to Beaumont, Tx., for lay-up and later disposal.

The CAPE MOHICAN was a SEABEE (Sea Barge) ship. These ships were designed to carry loaded barges instead of only the cargo itself. The idea behind it was to reduce loading times since the carrier ship only had to load or unload its barges. Loading was done using the ship's 2000-ton-capacity stern elevator. Under ideal conditions this process took only 13 hours. A similar design were the LASH (lighter aboard ships) ships [see Cape F - class LASH ships]. However, the LASH ships used smaller barges but carried more of them. Loading aboard the LASH ships was done using the ship's 405-ton-capacity gantry crane.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard SS CAPE MOHICAN. 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 CAPE MOHICAN History:

SS CAPE MOHICAN was built as a Maritime Administration-supported "Seabee" barge carrier for commercial service under the name SS TILLIE LYKES. She was constructed at General Dynamics' shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, as Maritime Administration hull number 243, and was completed and delivered into service on March 16, 1973. From that delivery date she operated commercially for Lykes Brothers Steamship Company. After more than a decade in commercial service, the ship was transferred into government control for surge sealift use: on September 12, 1986, she was turned over to the U.S. Maritime Administration at the Beaumont Reserve Fleet site in Texas and, at the same time, her name was changed from SS TILLIE LYKES to SS CAPE MOHICAN. The following day, September 13, 1986, she was outported under contract to Violet Dock Port at Violet, Louisiana, a movement consistent with the reserve fleet practice of distributing ships between holding locations while maintaining them for potential activation.

During the late Cold War era, SS CAPE MOHICAN's recorded reserve-fleet movements show a pattern of readiness management punctuated by exercises and shipyard periods. On August 1, 1988, she entered the James River Reserve Fleet in Virginia. On August 13, 1988, she was withdrawn from the James River site for a joint logistics over-the-shore (JLOTS) exercise, then returned and re-entered the James River Reserve Fleet on October 27, 1988, when the exercise period concluded. On April 17, 1989, she was again withdrawn from the James River Reserve Fleet, this time to proceed to a shipyard period connected to participation in Exercise Solid Shield, with documentation tying the movement to Lambert's Point in Norfolk, Virginia. After that repair-and-exercise cycle, she re-entered the James River Reserve Fleet on August 29, 1989.

The ship's largest verified early operational commitment under government control came with the Gulf crisis and the ensuing war with Iraq. On August 13, 1990, SS CAPE MOHICAN was withdrawn from the James River Reserve Fleet and sent to Moon Engineering at Norfolk for activation work. Within days, on August 21, 1990, she was tendered to the Military Sealift Command for service connected to Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Her documented "Desert Storm" tender period extended through September 29, 1991, reflecting the long sustainment tail required to move equipment and supplies while the United States and coalition partners built up forces, executed combat operations in early 1991, and then sustained postwar redeployments and regional presence. In the early 1990s, the ship continued to cycle through reserve status and activation tasks. She arrived back at the James River Reserve Fleet on January 8, 1993. On May 25, 1993, she departed again for an activation and she returned to the James River Reserve Fleet on September 20, 1993. On March 8, 1994, she departed once more, bound for Norfolk Shipbuilding and Drydock Corporation (NorShipCo) for repairs and activation-related work, demonstrating that even after Desert Storm-era service she remained part of the small, specialized pool of heavy-lift barge carriers that could be brought forward when the U.S. Transportation Command required additional sealift capacity.

In the mid-1990s, the U.S. government employed reserve-force shipping in support of contingency operations beyond the Persian Gulf. In fiscal year 1994, the Maritime Administration recorded SS CAPE MOHICAN as one of the Ready Reserve Force vessels activated for Operation Support Democracy, the sealift activation effort tied to U.S. military operations in the Caribbean theater during that period. In other words, beyond her role as an emergency surge asset for major war, she was also called forward as part of the broader post-Cold War pattern of limited but frequent contingency responses and large-scale joint exercises that tested mobilization timelines and the ability to deliver equipment from U.S. ports on short notice.

A defining event in SS CAPE MOHICAN's later career was a major environmental incident during maintenance in San Francisco Bay. On October 28, 1996, at approximately 3:30 p.m., while SS CAPE MOHICAN was undergoing routine shipyard work at San Francisco Drydock, fuel transfer activity resulted in an estimated 96,000 gallons of heavy bunker fuel oil being discharged into a floating dry dock, with approximately 40,000 gallons escaping the dry dock and spilling into San Francisco Bay at Pier 70. The spill spread through portions of the bay under stormy conditions and became a prominent case in West Coast spill response, cleanup management, and subsequent restoration planning. The natural resource damage assessment portion of the case ultimately produced a settlement for restoration funding. California's trustee documentation for the incident records a $3.625 million natural resource damage settlement allocation with defined categories (including recreational use impacts, seabird impacts, shoreline habitat impacts, and other ecological components), followed by years of project reporting and completion of restoration work. In parallel, the spill generated federal legal actions associated with limitation of liability proceedings and a consent-decree process that reached the public-notice stage by July 30, 1998.

In the early 2000s, SS CAPE MOHICAN remained a specialized heavy-lift barge carrier held for surge missions and major exercises. A documented incident from that era describes the ship grounding during an overseas exercise on May 21, 2001, near Pohang, South Korea, after dragging anchor in heavy winds. Later technical discussions of ship-routing risk have cited the incident in the context of weather-driven maritime casualty prevention and the downstream need for salvage and repair work. While the underlying operational exercise name and the full repair timeline are not consistently published, the incident is repeatedly described as an exercise-related grounding that required significant corrective work before the ship could resume readiness status.

By the mid-2000s, public fleet inventory reporting places SS CAPE MOHICAN firmly on the U.S. West Coast as part of the nation's surge sealift posture. As of August 31, 2006, the National Defense Reserve Fleet inventory listed SS CAPE MOHICAN in the Ready Reserve Force heavy-lift category with an Alameda, California, assignment. This West Coast positioning matched the strategic logic of having at least one heavy-lift Seabee barge carrier available to support Pacific deployments, West Coast embarkation ports, and exercises requiring delivery of lighterage and over-the-shore discharge systems. In the following decade, Maritime Administration publications continued to describe SS CAPE MOHICAN as a Seabee barge carrier in reduced operating status, positioned for activation within a short timeline, and paired conceptually with her sister ship SS CAPE MAY (T-AKR 5063) as the only two heavy-lift Seabee barge carriers in the Ready Reserve Force.

Public inventory records confirm that SS CAPE MOHICAN remained in that posture into the 2010s. By April 30, 2012, she continued to appear in National Defense Reserve Fleet inventory reporting as a Ready Reserve Force heavy-lift ship assigned at Alameda, California. During this period, she was maintained as a surge-capable asset, with the standard Ready Reserve Force model relying on periodic maintenance, preservation work, systems testing, and readiness management intended to keep the ship within her required activation window. She also continued to be used in a training-and-exercise context: she was photographed and described in connection with Exercise Brilliant Zenith 2015, an event that emphasized the role of sealift ships and lighterage in enabling forces to move from ship to shore. In broader policy terms, this was the era when U.S. sealift planners faced growing concerns about an aging surge fleet, the industrial base for repairs, and the practical difficulty of sustaining steam-powered platforms and their specialized cargo systems on tight activation timelines.

Those pressures contributed to a change in the ship's late-career status. By the mid-2010s, reporting on the Ready Reserve Force indicated that SS CAPE MOHICAN - together with SS CAPE MAY - had been retired from the Ready Reserve Force after the Department of Defense and U.S. Transportation Command determined there was no longer a requirement to keep the heavy-lift Seabee barge carriers in the active surge roster. Even after such retirements, ships often remain in government custody for extended periods while disposal planning, environmental compliance, and recycling capacity are coordinated. Public inventory snapshots show SS CAPE MOHICAN still carried in fleet records for years after retirement from active Ready Reserve Force assignment, reflecting the reality that administrative removal from a surge roster does not automatically translate into immediate dismantlement.

Inventory documents show SS CAPE MOHICAN still listed as a Ready Reserve Force ship at Oakland, California, as of September 30, 2020. In 2021, her physical disposition changed: on July 9, 2021, SS CAPE MOHICAN was towed away from Oakland, leaving San Francisco Bay under tow, with contemporaneous environmental reporting treating the departure as the end of a long local presence for the vessel associated with the 1996 spill. In the months that followed, fleet inventory reporting began to associate SS CAPE MOHICAN with the Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Texas rather than the Bay Area. By late 2022, public inventories placed her at Beaumont as part of the barge-ship category in reserve-fleet accounting. By July 31, 2025, and again by December 31, 2025, National Defense Reserve Fleet inventory reporting listed SS CAPE MOHICAN in the "non-retention" barge-ship division at Beaumont, Texas, with her status identified as disposal - confirming that, at least as of the end of 2025, she remained physically in reserve-fleet custody at Beaumont and had not yet been removed from inventory through completed recycling.

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SS CAPE MOHICAN Image Gallery:

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

The photos below were taken by me and show the CAPE MOHICAN berthed at Alameda, Calif., on March 28, 2010.

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