The Associated Press called them Noah’s Arks: the two MARAD ships homeported at Beaumont, Texas, took on board police dogs as well as emergency equipment and personnel from six jurisdictions.  The Cape Vincent and the Cape Victory, two roll-on roll-off ships, are familiar to the citizens of Beaumont; the red-white-and-blue striped stacks are just about the tallest things in town, and the two ships are homeported in the downtown harbor.   They looked like the safest place to weather Hurricane Rita.  So what rolled on were fire engines, ambulances, dump trucks, helicopters, and a tank truck to service them; road graders, john boats and porta-johns.  Captain James Byers of the Cape Victory forwarded to MARAD headquarters a list of everything they took on board: 

“By far the most belongs to Beaumont.  Beaumont has 64 pieces along with personal cars; the City of Groves, Port Neches, Jefferson County, Port of Beaumont, and City of Nederland each have a dozen or so pieces of equipment.  Then aboard the Vincent they even have 20 Rescue Dogs.  The Victory housed 60-plus emergency workers.

 Aboard the Victory we have: fire engines, ladder (fire) trucks, ambulances, helicopters, tank truck for the helicopters, john boats, command post trailers, command post vans, dump trucks, digger trucks, bucket trucks, stake bed trucks, pickup trucks, backhoe, road graders, air compressors, generators, flatbed trucks, container forklift, police cars, port-a-johns.

 Pictures I took of the various equipment on board the vessel and while loading are attached. (Click for photos)

 Talking with the Beaumont crew leaders, they gave careful consideration for every piece of equipment that they brought on board.  Given the worse case scenarios for flooding, massive tree removal, electrical lines and water/sewer repair.  The Sheriff's dept even brought helos so to get them back in the air to survey damage at first light.  The Beaumont crews, the Master and MARAD are going to develop a Lessons Learned package.”

 The Cape Victory and the Cape Vincent have each been activated three times during the War on Terrorism, and have taken tanks, trucks, ammunition, and other heavy military cargo to and from the Middle East.  The Cape Victory has served 349 days; the Cape Vincent has served 345.  The Cape Vincent has also been activated to aid in hurricane recovery efforts in and around the Port of New Orleans.  Now that it has unloaded its unusual cargo—as of September 24^th—the Cape Vincent will head out on that mission.  To find out more about the ships, click on these links:

 Cape Vincent

 Cape Victory

• Hurricane Relief Effort

• MARAD Ships Mobilized for Hurricane Recovery