# LASH Ships



## japottinger (Jun 16, 2004)

Can anyone confirm which if any LASH ships are still in service please?


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## surfaceblow (Jan 16, 2008)

International Shipholding discontinued its LASH Service when it sold the last vessel operated by the Forest Lines in December of 2007 for scrap. International Shipholding Subsidiary Waterman also operated a LASH vessel (Atlantic Forest ex Aleksey Kosygin) but it was also taken out of service and sold. I believe it was the second quarter of 2007. 

There are two LASH Vessel that are in the MSC Ready Reserve Fleet both are Steam Ships and are the Cape Farewell (T-AK 5073) and Cape Flattery (T-AK 5070). These two LASH Vessels are in a ten day activation group. There were more LASH Vessels in the Ready Reserve Fleet but they are not listed on The Military Sealift Command Fleet Listing any more. There are also two Seabee Class vessels the Cape May and Cape Mohican which carry barges but with a different loading system under the control of MARAD the last listing I saw they were ROS 5. Meaning that they are to be fully operational in 5 days to load.


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## japottinger (Jun 16, 2004)

Many thanks


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## Hugh Ferguson (Sep 4, 2006)

surfaceblow said:


> International Shipholding discontinued its LASH Service when it sold the last vessel operated by the Forest Lines in December of 2007 for scrap. International Shipholding Subsidiary Waterman also operated a LASH vessel (Atlantic Forest ex Aleksey Kosygin) but it was also taken out of service and sold. I believe it was the second quarter of 2007.
> 
> There are two LASH Vessel that are in the MSC Ready Reserve Fleet both are Steam Ships and are the Cape Farewell (T-AK 5073) and Cape Flattery (T-AK 5070). These two LASH Vessels are in a ten day activation group. There were more LASH Vessels in the Ready Reserve Fleet but they are not listed on The Military Sealift Command Fleet Listing any more. There are also two Seabee Class vessels the Cape May and Cape Mohican which carry barges but with a different loading system under the control of MARAD the last listing I saw they were ROS 5. Meaning that they are to be fully operational in 5 days to load.


 I believe it was these two LASH ships which were anchored, for a few days in Falmouth Bay, on their return to the States after the Desert Storm operation. I was amused one day to get a phone call from a retired Admiral who lived in the village. He had never seen ships like that and wondered if I knew anything about them. Having, on several occasions piloted them to Gravesend and the Medway, I was able to enlighten him as to how they floated loaded barges in through a stern door and then, on arrival at their destination, simply reversed the process. They weren't all managed by Lykes Lines: one that I piloted into the Medway was the German flagged, Muenchen. I could hardly believe hearing soon after, of her loss with all hands when she was overwhelmed in heavy weather. They were the largest cargo ships in the world at that time.


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## Klaatu83 (Jan 22, 2009)

I had the opportunity to sail on several LASH ships over the years, including the LASH Pacifico, the Austral Rainbow and the Green Harbour (that was indeed the way the name was spelled despite the fact that she was an American ship). They were never really successful in competition against container ships, but Waterman used them until the early 2000s on routes to "third-world" nations that didn't have container-handling facilities.

LASH ships were employed by the military during the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War but, in my experience, the military never really understood the proper way to utilize them. During the Gulf War I saw the Green Harbour tied up alongside a dock in the Persian Gulf, unloading her barges one by one. The military had the ship discharge each barge one at a time, discharged their cargoes alongside the dock, and then re-loaded the empty barges back on board the ship again. Anyone who's ever sailed a LASH ship could have told them that the correct procedure is to ANCHOR the ship in the roadstead, discharge all the barges and then sail the ship away to take on another batch of loaded barges. In fact, during the Gulf War the LASH ships actually carried their own tugboats in order to facilitate that operation. When the ship returns she discharges the loaded barges and re-loads the empties. On commercial service the ships rarely spent more than 24 hours in port. Working for the military, we once spent THREE MONTHS loading in a single port in Thailand!

The best example of how little the military understood LASH ships occurred several years later, when I was serving aboard that same Green Harbour while she was part of the pre-position squadron at Diego Garcia. One day we received a rare visit from some of the Navy staff officers. Upon boarding the ship one of those officers inquired where the ramp was. I informed him that we didn't have a ramp by reason of the fact that we were not a ro-ro but a barge carrier.

It's a shame the military never figured out how versatile LASH ships could be. With the cranes stowed they could quite easily have been set up to operate helicopters, or even harriers, from a flight deck built over the tops of the barges abaft the stacks. In addition, there was plenty of room to stow a deck load of landing craft, which could easily have been launched by the ships' 480-ton capacity barge cranes. 

Although the ships themselves weren't particularly fast (they couldn't be with all the hydrodynamic drag created by those huge, flat transom sterns), they were built like battleships. On one occasion some shipyard workers had to drill a hole through the main deck, and it proved to be solid steel two inches thick. I doubt if any warships are built as solidly nowadays.


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