MarAd scrapping five more in ghost fleet

MarAd scrapping five more in ghost fleet The U.S. Maritime Administration said it has awarded contracts to send five ships to the breakers: four from the James River Reserve Fleet in Newport News, Va., and one from the Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Texas.
   The four from the James River Reserve Fleet had all been under a contract with North American Ship Recycling of Sparrows Point, Md., which ceased operations before it could take possession of the ships.
   Three vessels from the James River fleet, Pride, Scan and Cape Charles, will be scrapped at the Marine Metals Inc. facility in Brownsville, Texas, at a cost of more than $1.4 million.
   Southern Cross, also a James River ship, originally awarded to the Sparrows Point firm, will be dismantled at the Esco Marine facility in Brownsville, under terms of a $617,600 contract. Banner, which is at the Beaumont fleet site, will also be dismantled at Esco, under terms of a $532,726 contract.
   The departure of Cape Charles, Pride, Southern Cross and Scan will bring the number of ships that have left the James River mothball fleet since January 2001 to 66. All five ships in MarAd's latest announcement were built in the 1960s. The Cape Charles, a freighter launched in 1963, was constructed at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard at Sparrows Point. Pride, Southern Cross and Scan were built for the Moore-McCormack Co. as combination freight and passenger vessels. The freighter Banner was built in 1961 as the Export Banner at the NASSCO shipyard in California.
   MarAd keeps ships in three National Defense Reserve Fleet sites to support Armed Forces movements and to respond to national emergencies. Those sites are the James River Reserve Fleet in Newport News; the Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Beaumont; and the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in Benicia, Calif.
   When the ships become obsolete, MarAd arranges for their disposition in an environmentally-sensitive manner.