The 648-foot

roll-on/roll-off Roll-on/roll-off (RORO or ro-ro) ships are cargo ships designed to carry wheeled cargo, such as cars, motorcycles, trucks, semi-trailer trucks, buses, trailers, and railroad cars, that are driven on and off the ship on their own wheels or using ...

and

container ship A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal ...

, built in 1977, was previously known as ''MV Saudi Makkah'' and ''MV Seaspeed Asia''. She can carry 1,315 containers and has both bow and stern thrusters. After being acquired on 29 April 1994, was in the

Ready Reserve Force The National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) consists of ships of the United States of America, mostly merchant vessels, that have been "mothballed" but can be activated within 20 to 120 days to provide shipping during national military emergencies ...

. She is generally used to transport vehicles to war zones from the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Syrian weapons destruction

left, Some of the chemical weapons destruction equipment deployed on MV ''Cape Ray'' ''Cape Ray'' played a central role in the 2014 destruction of Syria's declared stockpile of chemical weapons. For that mission she was under the command of civilian master Rick Jordan and was outfitted with two

Field Deployable Hydrolysis System The Field Deployable Hydrolysis System (FDHS) is a transportable, high throughput neutralization system developed by the U.S. Army for converting chemical warfare material into compounds not usable as weapons. Operation Neutralization is facilita ...

s by

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

civilians, who then performed the destruction operations at sea. On 16 January 2014 the Italian Minister of Infrastructures and Transports,

Maurizio Lupi Maurizio Lupi (born 3 October 1959) is an Italian politician. He served as minister of infrastructure and transport between 28 April 2013 and 20 March 2015. Early life and education Lupi was born in Milan, Italy, on 3 October 1959. He has a deg ...

, said that ''MV Cape Ray'' would load 530 tons of chemical weapons material in the

port of Gioia Tauro A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ha ...

Calabria , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

, from the Danish ship ''

MV Ark Futura MV ''Ark Futura'' is a 13,500 DWT roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) freighter, completed in 1996 as ''Dana Futura'' (subsequently ''Tor Futura'') for the Danish shipping group DFDS. She has operated commercially on many freight ferry routes, but since 2004 h ...

''. She deployed on 25 June 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cape Ray 1977 ships Chemical weapons demilitarization Ships built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries Transports of the United States Navy