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MV Cape Edmont (T-AKR 5069)

Sorry, no coat of arms available.

MV Cape Edmont arriving at Bremerhaven, Germany, on January 21, 2025. Photo by Thoralf Doehring.

MV CAPE EDMONT was originally built and delivered as MV PARALLA to Rederi A/B Transatlantic in 1971. On July 7, 1986, she was purchased by Automar IV Corp. and renamed MV CAPE EDMONT. In April 1987, the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration acquired the ship for the Ready Reserve Force. The ship kept its name but received the additional designation T-AKR 5069. MV CAPE EDMONT 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 EDMONT. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

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MV CAPE EDMONT History:

At the beginning of the 1970s, as roll-on/roll-off technology and global containerization were reshaping long-distance cargo trades, Swedish owner Rederi Ab Transatlantic ordered a new deep-sea RO/RO vessel from Eriksbergs Mekaniska Verkstad at Gothenburg. The result was MV PARALLA, a roughly 20,600-dwt twin-funnelled RO/RO container ship with multiple internal vehicle decks and a characteristic sloping stern ramp that allowed vehicles and containers to be driven on and off at a range of quay heights. Built in Sweden and handed over in January 1971, PARALLA was designed for high-speed intercontinental service, about 17 knots, with a length of roughly 199 meters (about 653 feet) and a beam of just under 29 meters, giving some 150,000 square feet of vehicle lanes and substantial container capacity both on and below deck.

From the outset PARALLA was committed to the newly established Pacific Australia Direct (PAD) service, a three-ship consortium involving Australian, British and Swedish partners that in 1971 opened a regular RO/RO container line from the Australian ports of Adelaide, Burnie, Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane across the Pacific via Noumea and Suva to Honolulu and onward to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland (Oregon), Tacoma and New Westminster in Canada. PARALLA operated alongside her near-sisters ALLUNGA (the Australian contribution) and DILKARA (British-flag), maintaining a roughly three-weekly schedule. In early 1971, soon after delivery, she began appearing at Australian ports. Contemporary coverage records her arrival in Sydney with a mixed load of cars and containerized cargo, where her stern ramp and multi-deck internal roadways were highlighted as a new way of working cargo directly to the quay. Throughout the early 1970s she shuttled between Australian east-coast ports and the U.S. and Canadian west coasts, with intermediate calls at island ports such as Noumea, Suva and Honolulu, carrying cars, trucks, machinery and containers for the growing Pacific trade and effectively replacing older conventional cargo ships on those routes.

Through the 1970s and into the first half of the 1980s, PARALLA remained on PAD's long trans-Pacific loop with ALLUNGA and DILKARA, reflecting both the expansion of Pacific trade and the shift to RO/RO-container hybrids. The three-ship system allowed relatively tight schedules: each vessel would load in Australia, work cargo at South Pacific ports and Hawaii, then continue to the major container terminals of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Tacoma and New Westminster before returning across the Pacific. The details of each individual voyage are not preserved in open sources, but shipping records consistently place PARALLA on this PAD run throughout the decade, with occasional documentation of her at ports such as Fremantle and Honolulu as the "Swedish ship" of the PAD trio.

By the mid-1980s, structural changes in liner shipping and the arrival of larger, more specialized container vessels began to erode the economic basis of the original PAD ro-ro trio. In 1986, Rederi Ab Transatlantic sold PARALLA to Automar IV Corporation, a U.S. company specializing in operating vessels in support of American government shipping programs. Ship registers show the sale being completed on July 7, 1986, at which point the ship was renamed MV CAPE EDMONT and reoriented toward potential employment under U.S. government control.

In April 1987, the U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration (MARAD) acquired CAPE EDMONT for the Ready Reserve Force (RRF), a subset of the National Defense Reserve Fleet intended to provide rapid sealift in a crisis. On April 20, 1987, she entered the RRF under the designation T-AKR 5069 while retaining the commercial name MV CAPE EDMONT. Under this arrangement she remained a civilian-manned merchant vessel, but if activated she would operate for the Military Sealift Command (MSC) as a vehicle cargo ship. Documentation from MARAD and later vessel characteristics pamphlets place CAPE EDMONT in lay-up at the Atlantic Reserve Fleet site in Charleston, South Carolina, maintained in "ROS-5" status - capable of full activation within five days of receiving orders.

In the late 1980s, CAPE EDMONT settled into the typical routine of an RRF RO/RO ship: extended periods laid-up at Charleston punctuated by scheduled maintenance and periodic "Turbo Activation" tests, during which the ship had to go from reserve to fully crewed, provisioned and ready for sea within her prescribed readiness window. MARAD's records show her participating in these activation drills, with one notable example in 1997, when CAPE EDMONT was activated at Jacksonville, Florida, as part of a multi-ship no-notice test. Together with other RRF vessels, she was brought to sea-ready condition and accepted by MSC ahead of the required timetable. These exercises were intended to verify not only the material condition of the ship and her machinery but also the ability of operators and mariners to reconstitute a functioning crew and systems on short notice.

The decisive test of CAPE EDMONT's role as a strategic sealift asset came with the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, prompting the United States and coalition partners to launch OPERATION DESERT SHIELD and build up forces in the region, followed by OPERATION DESERT STORM in January 1991 to liberate Kuwait. Strategic sealift, much of it provided by MSC and the RRF, was central to moving heavy equipment from U.S. ports to the Arabian Gulf.

CAPE EDMONT was among the RRF roll-on/roll-off vessels activated during this surge. She was taken out of lay-up, crewed with civilian mariners, and loaded with military cargo - principally wheeled and tracked vehicles and associated equipment - at U.S. ports before joining the sealift stream across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean toward the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf.

During this intense operational period, CAPE EDMONT herself became one of the many ships experiencing mechanical casualties under heavy use. A U.S. Navy salvage and diving report on DESERT SHIELD / DESERT STORM notes that among the marine accidents recorded in the conflict was an internal engine-room fire and resulting breakdown aboard CAPE EDMONT, serious enough to leave the ship dead in the water and require towing back to port for repairs. The report places this casualty within a broader pattern of increased risk: hundreds of MSC-controlled ships were operating in and around the Gulf, with several suffering groundings, collisions, fires or breakdowns - including USNS CURTISS (T-AVB 4), USNS CAPE BON (T-AK 5059), USNS CAPE CHARLES (T-AK 5038) and USNS SANTA ANA (T-AK 5022). In CAPE EDMONT's case, the available documentation does not give an exact date or position for the breakdown, but it is clear that she had to be withdrawn from the sealift flow long enough for repairs before returning to reserve status after the Gulf War.

Following her Gulf War employment and subsequent repairs, CAPE EDMONT resumed her pattern of lay-up at Charleston with periodic readiness exercises and maintenance. Public sources do not provide a detailed, year-by-year account of every activation through the early and mid-1990s, but MARAD reporting indicates that she continued to pass Turbo Activation drills, confirming that the vessel and her operating company could still bring her to full operational status on demand.

In late 1998, CAPE EDMONT was called on for a different kind of mission, this time humanitarian. In October and November 1998, Hurricane Mitch caused catastrophic flooding and landslides across Central America, destroying bridges, roads and other infrastructure in countries including Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. In response, the United States mobilized elements of the RRF to carry heavy construction equipment and building materials to the region. MARAD's annual report and congressional testimony on the relief effort state that four RRF RO/ROs were activated: CAPE DUCATO (T-AKR 5051), CAPE EDMONT, CAPE VICTORY (T-AKR 9701) and CAPE VINCENT (T-AKR 9666). A Department of Defense release adds operational detail: CAPE VINCENT was the first to reach Corinto, Nicaragua, arriving December 11, 1998 with heavy construction machinery, trucks and tractors, while CAPE EDMONT followed, stopping briefly at Corinto on December 12, 1998 to discharge part of her cargo before proceeding to Acajutla, El Salvador, where she off-loaded the remainder of her construction materials for use in rebuilding storm-damaged infrastructure. The four ships shuttled between U.S. ports and multiple Caribbean and Pacific ports in Central America on several round-trip voyages, illustrating how the same RO/RO assets used for wartime sealift could be turned to disaster relief.

By the end of the 1990s, CAPE EDMONT remained a fully enrolled RRF ship based at Charleston. In the 1997-1999 timeframe she was again the subject of Turbo Activations and inspections as MARAD and MSC worked to refine procedures for rapid call-up of reserve shipping. The ship's basic configuration remained that of a large, unarmed RO/RO cargo vessel with a single propeller, three main diesel engines and multiple vehicle decks accessed via ramps, optimized for loading tanks, trucks, trailers and containers directly from the pier.

The next major operational chapter came with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Following the September 11 attacks and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the United States again relied heavily on sealift to deploy and sustain forces overseas. CAPE EDMONT was among the RRF ships activated to support OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. A 2003 issue of the Seafarers Log, the house journal of the Seafarers International Union, includes a photograph and caption showing CAPE EDMONT moored at a Kuwaiti pier alongside CAPE KNOX (T-AKR 5082), another RRF RO/RO, during the buildup of U.S. forces in Kuwait. The article, focused on the merchant mariners' contribution to the war effort, confirms that CAPE EDMONT had been activated, crewed and sailed to the northern Arabian Gulf with military cargo, where she discharged vehicles and equipment at Kuwaiti facilities supporting U.S. ground forces.

After initial OIF deployments in 2003, CAPE EDMONT returned to reserve status, but she was soon earmarked for follow-on troop and equipment rotations. According to open-source summaries derived from Naval Institute proceedings, she was reactivated again on January 8, 2004 to transport equipment and support the rotation of units scheduled for June 2004 in the Iraq theater. While source material does not specify the exact embarkation and discharge ports for this particular rotation, it places CAPE EDMONT within the pool of RO/RO and fast sealift ships that shuttled heavy equipment between U.S. East and Gulf Coast load ports and Persian Gulf discharge ports as part of the ongoing force rotation plan.

In early 2005, CAPE EDMONT shifted from Middle Eastern logistics to a U.S. Southern Command exercise in Latin America. Photographic records from the National Archives show that on February 17, 2005, CAPE EDMONT was alongside in Colon, Panama, serving as the sealift platform for NEW HORIZONS 2005, a recurring joint training and humanitarian exercise conducted by U.S. Army South and reserve components. In a series of images, U.S. Army M916A1 truck tractors pulling M870A1 low-bed semi-trailers, as well as M4K forklifts and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters of the 1st Battalion, 108th Aviation Brigade, Kansas Army National Guard, are shown driving or being towed down CAPE EDMONT's ramps onto the pier at Colon on that date. NEW HORIZONS missions typically combine engineer construction projects such as school or clinic building with medical assistance and training. In this case, CAPE EDMONT's role was to move the rotary-wing aircraft, vehicles and support equipment required by the aviation battalion and other participating units into Panama.

Through the later 2000s and 2010s, CAPE EDMONT continued in Charleston-based reserve status with periodic maintenance and readiness tests. A RAND Corporation study on strategic sealift readiness lists CAPE EDMONT among the RRF vessels undergoing Turbo Activation drills between 2010 and 2018, indicating that she remained part of the actively exercised surge fleet rather than a dormant hulk. In September 2019, U.S. Transportation Command directed a large-scale turbo activation to test the nation's ability to mobilize sealift rapidly. Press reporting on that event later cited in public summaries of the ship's career, includes CAPE EDMONT among the ships called up, confirming that nearly five decades after her construction the former PARALLA was still regarded as a useful heavy-lift asset.

Early 2020 brought CAPE EDMONT into another multinational exercise context, this time in North Africa. For AFRICAN LION 20, a major U.S.-Moroccan-led exercise under U.S. Africa Command, equipment had to be moved from the United States to Morocco for use by U.S. and partner units. A U.S. Army report from March 6, 2020 describes how a cargo ship from the United States arrived at the port of Agadir, Morocco on February 29, 2020, carrying nearly 7,000 tons of military equipment for AFRICAN LION 20. The accompanying photo caption identifies that vessel as CAPE EDMONT and notes that she was operated by Merchant Mariners under the U.S. Department of Transportation's Ready Reserve Force. The article also states that the cargo move was from Jacksonville, Florida, to Agadir. Once berthed, CAPE EDMONT discharged M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers of the Utah Army National Guard and other vehicles, which were staged ashore and then moved by U.S. Army logistics units to training areas in Morocco. The exercise was scheduled to run from March 23 to April 3, 2020 with some 9,000 troops from eight countries, and CAPE EDMONT's February 29, 2020 arrival ensured that heavy equipment was in place ahead of the planned start. After completing her African Lion sealift mission, CAPE EDMONT returned to RRF status.

Most recently, photographic documentation shows CAPE EDMONT again active on the other side of the Atlantic. A series of images taken on January 21, 2025 depict MV CAPE EDMONT arriving at Bremerhaven, Germany, underway and still carrying the grey livery of a U.S. government RO/RO. These images, combined with her continuing listing as an RRF asset, indicate that even in the mid-2020s she has been kept in sufficiently sound operational condition to undertake transatlantic voyages when tasked, as part of logistics movements coordinated with European allies.

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MV CAPE EDMONT Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me and show MV CAPE EDMONT arriving at Bremerhaven, Germany, on January 21, 2025.

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