Real-time vessel monitoring provided by MarineTraffic.com reveals the hospital ship USNS Comfort has just cast off from its berth in Norfolk VA, and is currently making 11 knots as it exits the harbor to begin its mission of mercy to Puerto Rico.
So ends a tumultuous week for the hospital ship and its civilian crew and medical staff of about 1,000 souls — a week that began with the Department of Defense refusing to send the desperately needed vessel. But thousands...perhaps tens of thousands ...of us (including Hillary Clinton) raised holy hell across social media and in phone calls to Congress, and late Monday afternoon the Trump administration relented, ordering Comfort to sail for San Juan.
Much — too much — has been made in the intervening days by armchair seamen regarding why it should take the aircraft carrier-sized hospital ship and its enormous civilian crew a few days to actually cast off after receiving orders to sail (including, unfortunately, here at Daily Kos). While that’s certainly not an unreasonable question (and a question that was answered in full in my previous diary), the way in which some commenters cast it came sadly close to impugning the honor of Comfort’s heroic crew.
Please join me in wishing this Sister of (USNS) Mercy and her staff and crew of heroes fair winds and following seas as they sail to the aid of the our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
