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MV Cape Rise (T-AKR 9678)

Sorry, no coat of arms available.

Built in 1977, the ship was delivered to Ro-Ro Charterers Corp. as MV SEASPEED ARABIA. Later renamed SAUDI RIYADH, she was purchased by the Maritime Administration in August 1993 and was subsequently converted for military use at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point Shipyard at Baltimore, Md. Renamed MV CAPE RISE (T-AKR 9678), she was assigned to the Ready Reserve Force on November 21, 1994. Since then, she is maintained in reduced operating status in a layberth at Portsmouth, Va. If required, she can be fully activated within 5 days.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard MV CAPE RISE. 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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MV CAPE RISE History:

MV CAPE RISE is a roll-on/roll-off sealift vessel in the U.S. Maritime Administration's Ready Reserve Force (RRF). She was built in Japan in 1977 and, before entering U.S. government service, operated commercially under the former names SEASPEED ARABIA and SAUDI RIYADH. On August 9, 1993, the U.S. government (via the Maritime Administration) acquired the vessel. Later public RRF documentation continues to associate her with that acquisition date while listing her as an "Atlantic" RRF ship homeported/layberthed at Portsmouth, Virginia. As maintained for surge sealift, CAPE RISE is configured and reported as a Reduced Operating Status-5 (ROS-5) ship - meaning she is held in a reduced-crewing/maintenance posture intended to be capable of activation within five days of notice - and she is repeatedly listed in official MARAD location/inventory snapshots at Portsmouth alongside other ROS-5 roll-on/roll-off vessels of the same grouping.

During the mid-1990s, the ship was among RRF assets tasked for contingency support: on December 1, 1995, the Department of Transportation announced that CAPE RISE and CAPE RACE (T-AKR 9960) had been ordered activated to help move U.S. Army vehicles and equipment for the Bosnia deployment, part of the U.S. logistics effort supporting peace implementation operations in the former Yugoslavia after the Dayton Peace Agreement. The public statement described rapid activation and early sailing relative to required timelines, reflecting the post-Cold War U.S. emphasis on proving strategic sealift responsiveness using the RRF.

By the end of fiscal year 1999, MARAD reported that a five-ship RO/RO upgrade program intended to add roll-on/roll-off capacity was complete except for the final ship, with CAPE RISE specifically identified as the last upgrade still in progress at that time. MARAD characterized those first five upgrades as adding nearly 180,000 square feet of RO/RO capacity in aggregate, situating CAPE RISE in the broader late-1990s effort to close mobility shortfalls identified in mobility studies and war-planning lift requirements.

Over the following years, official RRF status snapshots continued to list CAPE RISE among the Portsmouth-based ROS-5 RO/RO ships, indicating continuing retention as an "organic surge" sealift asset rather than disposal or transfer out of the force. During the 2014-2015 West Africa Ebola crisis, the U.S. government's response included deploying RRF surge ships in support of Department of Defense logistics: CAPE RISE, CAPE WRATH (T-AKR 9962), and CAPE RACE are specifically documented as supporting Operation United Assistance in West Africa from October 2014 to March 2015, with the mission purpose described as assisting in reducing and preventing the spread of Ebola - an operation that required rapid movement of equipment and sustainment materiel to enable U.S. and international response efforts during a major global public-health emergency with significant regional stability implications.

In the late 2010s, U.S. Transportation Command expanded the scale and rigor of no-notice activation exercises designed to measure surge readiness across the combined Military Sealift Command surge fleet and the MARAD RRF. CAPE RISE appears in the official record of Turbo Activation 19-Plus, a large end-of-fiscal-year activation exercise: on September 16, 2019, USTRANSCOM reviewed fleet readiness ("C-status") and initiated Turbo Activation 19-Plus via an activation order dated September 16, 2019, which executed a nearly simultaneous activation/evaluation event across multiple layberth locations and was described as the largest vessel activation exercise in USTRANSCOM history. In that exercise documentation, CAPE RISE is explicitly included in the randomly generated selection order list and is also tabulated in the exercise's performance/demographics appendix as an RO/RO ship with 176,313 square feet of military useful cargo space under MARAD management. She is recorded as being at C-1 status at activation and assessed as "Pass-C1", reflecting that she met the applicable readiness condition as evaluated under the event's framework.

Entering the mid-2020s, MARAD's published layberth listings continued to place CAPE RISE at Portsmouth (Pier 3) among the ROS-5 RRF ships there, and MARAD's public NDRF/RRF inventories continued to record her as an Atlantic RRF vessel at Portsmouth. In the official public NDRF inventory dated December 2024, CAPE RISE is listed at Portsmouth, Virginia as an RRF ship, and she remains listed the same way in the public inventory dated June 2025, indicating that she had not been removed from the Ready Reserve Force as of that point. This continuing inclusion aligns with MARAD's contemporaneous layberth documentation that still showed Portsmouth RRF berthing arrangements and associated contract timeframes for that location.

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MV CAPE RISE Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me and show the CAPE RISE at her layberth at Portsmouth, Va., on October 27, 2010.

The photos below were taken by me and show the CAPE RISE at her layberth at Portsmouth, Va., on May 6, 2012.

The photo below was taken by Michael Jenning and shows the CAPE RISE at her layberth at Portsmouth, Va., on September 6, 2022.

The photo below was taken by Michael Jenning and shows the CAPE RISE at her layberth at Portsmouth, Va., on May 31, 2025.

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