U.S. Hospital Ship Gets Under Way After Trump Greenland Announcement
USNS Mercy is due for a yard period in Portland and appears headed for a Panama Canal transit
Three days after President Donald Trump declared that he had ordered a hospital ship to Greenland, the hospital ship USNS Mercy has departed a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama and gotten under way. Her next scheduled port call is at the Vigor shipyard in Portland, Oregon, where she is due to start a six-month drydocking on March 20.
At Mercy's sea speed, it would take her more than 20 days of continuous sailing to reach Oregon, plus additional time spent transiting the Panama Canal. Departing today, she would arrive just in time to begin her drydocking period, which the Department of Defense paid $89 million to arrange.
If started on schedule, Mercy's yard period would run through September 20. The drydocking builds upon previous emergent repair work performed at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile; the ship has not yet completed the usual deep maintenance and inspections that would be done in a five-year drydocking. Sister ship USNS Comfort has just started a yard period at Alabama Shipyard and is said to be unavailable.
Mercy's movements have been closely watched since Saturday, when President Donald Trump announced that his administration would "send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there." At the time, he said that the "boat" was on its way, and he shared an illustration of USNS Mercy. As of Monday, defense officials told the Wall Street Journal that no orders for Mercy's deployment had yet been received.
The origins of President Trump's claimed Greenland mission are unclear. Danish and Greenlandic officials have rejected Trump's announcement and have said that the hospital ship is not needed in Greenland. As a Danish territory, Greenland offers free health care and prescription medications to all its citizens, along with free emergency care for visitors; in Alabama, the location from which USNS Mercy has just departed, an estimated eight percent of the population lacks health insurance coverage.
One unusual origin story for the proposed Greenland mission has emerged. A Greenlandic construction worker who has previously organized events for the Trump family in Nuuk, 52-year-old Jørgen Boassen, told the Wall Street Journal that he had mentioned a need for better free health care to Louisiana Governor and White House Greenland envoy Jeff Landry. Boassen met with Landry during a cultural exchange to Louisiana, and brought up the health care topic. Landry confirmed that he later relayed the request to Trump, who announced the hospital ship mission several hours later. (Boassen told the Journal that he had not had a hospital ship in mind.)
Trump has repeatedly expressed a desire to annex Greenland, sparking disagreement with Denmark. The U.S. enjoys unfettered treaty access to the island for defense purposes, but Trump asserts that it is necessary for strategic purposes for the U.S. to "own" the island.
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