A photo of the USNS Mercy traveling up the Willamette River in 2015 for repairs at Swan’s Island Vigor Industrial in Portland, Oregon. (Mark Graves/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — A 138 million pound, nearly 900-foot-long floating hospital arrived at Swan Island in Portland yesterday afternoon. The behemoth USNS Mercy is hard to miss if you’re driving within eyeshot of Swan Island. Originally built as an oil tanker in the 1970s, it’s nearly three football fields long and painted white with giant red crosses symbolizing it’s a humanitarian vessel.
The ship is currently docked in the Willamette River at Swan Island’s Vigor Industrial where it will undergo regular maintenance and upkeep that takes place about every 15 months. The Navy hospital ship, used in humanitarian efforts and disaster relief around the world, has 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms and can treat up to 300 surgical patients a day. It offers radiological services and has a pharmacy and optometry lab.
In the past, Mercy has been loaded onto Vigor Industrial’s drydock called The Vigorous, North America’s largest floating drydock purchased in 2014 for $50 million.
It’s unclear exactly when the ship will depart and head back to its home in San Diego, but it should be around until at least early June. Those interested in tracking the ship can look it up on vesselfinder.com.
Owned by the Navy but run by mostly civilian mariners, Mercy also has a similar sister ship stationed on the East Coast called the USNS Comfort. Both assisted during the COVID pandemic. Mercy also assisted after the 2011 Japan tsunami and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Vigor Industrial is also currently servicing the USNS Kaiser and USNS John Lewis, which are both Military Sealift Command (MSC) vessels like Mercy.
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