 American Cormorant with deck cargo in Durban (1990's).
American Cormorant is not the sort of ship often seen in our waters. But I spotted her in the early 1990's with her deck cargo on board. She is a semi-submersible (float-on/float-off) vessel that is used in the prepositioning of United States Army cargo in the Indian Ocean at the island of Diego Garcia. The ship, operated by Osprey-Acomarit carries the equipment required to establish a working port. The ship's cargo deck can be placed 26 feet below the water's surface by ballasting the ship to a draft of 66 feet. In this way, barges and other embarked watercraft may be floated off directly into the water. The barges contain the materiel-handling equipment needed to move container and equipment ashore. Additionally, three tug boats, two LCM 8s, a ROWPU barge, and a floating 100-ton crane barge are embarked aboard the ship. She is 738 ft long with a beam of 135 ft and 32 ft draft and displaces 69,555 tons.
She was originally designed as a conventional oil tanker and was built in Sweden as Kollbris and launched in 1975. She was converted into a semi-submersible, heavy-lift carrier in 1982, returning to service under the name Ferncarrier. In November 1985 she was purchased by Cormorant Shipholding and reflagged as an American vessel and renamed American Cormorant and has since been operated on time charter for the Army by Osprey-Acomarit Ship Management of Bethesda, Md., and is crewed by some 20 American merchant sailors.
Her usual deck cargo consists of: three LCM-8 landing craft, two larger LCU-2000 utility landing craft, three 100-foot tugboats, a barge-mounted 300,000-gallon-per-day reverse-osmosis water purification unit and a 100-ton floating crane.
Photo by Derek Walker.
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