Sea-Land ordered the SL-7s to run scheduled trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic container routes at a speed no rival container line could match. The 1973 and 1979 oil shocks made that speed ruinously expensive to operate commercially, and Sea-Land sold all eight ships to the Navy in 1981 and 1982.² The Navy converted them at National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) in San Diego and at Avondale Shipyard in Louisiana between 1984 and 1986, adding roll-on/roll-off ramps, shipboard cranes, and reinforced vehicle decks so the ships could load an armored brigade's tanks and trucks without needing a modern container port.^1,2 The result, renamed the Algol class after its lead ship USNS Algol, became the backbone of the Fast Sealift Squadron and one of many transport and cargo ships in the Military Sealift Command's strategic-lift fleet.

The ship is a roll-on/roll-off vessel, meaning wheeled and tracked vehicles drive on and off under their own power rather than being craned aboard in containers, a design choice made specifically for military cargo rather than the boxed freight the ships originally carried. All eight hulls, Algol, Bellatrix, Denebola, Pollux, Altair, Regulus, Capella, and Antares, are named for bright stars, following Navy convention for auxiliary cargo ships. Three decades after their conversion, the Algol-class fast sealift ships are being retired, and the story of their military career runs from a 1990 Persian Gulf buildup to a 2024 bridge collapse that trapped two of them in Baltimore harbor.

As built for Sea-Land, each SL-7 measured about 289.6 meters (946 feet) in length with a 32.2 meter (105.5 foot) beam, and could carry 1,968 twenty-foot-equivalent containers, roughly 50 percent more than competing US-flag container ships of the era.³ The military conversion did not change the hull. It added four heavy-lift cranes, side ramps and stern ramps, and reworked cargo holds sized for vehicles instead of boxes, giving each ship roughly 195,000 to 207,000 square feet of vehicle stowage area depending on the individual hull.⁴ A typical loadout for one Algol-class ship during the 1990 Gulf buildup ran to more than 700 Army vehicles, including M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and fuel trucks.⁵

{{photo-req side=right q="SL-7 Sea-Land container ship 1970s" caption="A Sea-Land SL-7 container ship in commercial service before its US Navy conversion" alt="Sea-Land SL-7 fast container ship at sea"}}

Propulsion is what defines the class. Each ship carries two Foster-Wheeler boilers feeding two General Electric steam turbines rated at a combined 120,000 shaft horsepower, turning twin shafts.³ That plant was built for raw speed, not efficiency, and it shows in the record book, in August 1973 the SL-7 Sea-Land Exchange (later renamed Algol) crossed the Atlantic eastbound at 34.97 knots, and Sea-Land Commerce (later Regulus) still holds the trans-Pacific speed record for a cargo ship, averaging 33.216 knots.³ One of the class reportedly touched 38 knots during post-conversion sea trials.¹

Displacement runs to roughly 54,895 long tons loaded.⁶ A nucleus crew of about eighteen merchant mariners maintains each ship in reduced-operating status, with roughly twenty-five more brought aboard to fully activate it for a deployment, a small crew for a ship this size because the vessel carries no combat systems of its own beyond basic self-defense equipment.³ Design speed of 33 knots plus sits far above the 20 to 24 knot range typical of purpose-built military sealift ships, a gap that defines almost every comparison the class draws with its successors.

The lead design concept traces to Malcolm McLean, the trucking-industry figure widely credited with popularizing the modern shipping container, whose company Sea-Land ordered the SL-7s to outrun every rival container line on the fastest scheduled ocean routes in the world.⁷ One of the eight hulls was even named Sea-Land McLean after him before its later Navy renaming to Capella. Built in Dutch and West German yards for Sea-Land and delivered in 1972 and 1973, the ships briefly represented the pinnacle of commercial container-ship design, then became a cautionary tale about fuel price risk within a few years of entering service.⁸

By 1981 the ships were losing Sea-Land money on every voyage. The Naval Sea Systems Command stepped in and bought six of them that year for $207.5 million, a price that included thousands of shipping containers and chassis Sea-Land no longer needed, with an option (later exercised) on two more hulls to bring the class to eight.⁷ The Navy's original working names for the class, including Betelgeuse, Galaxy, Zenith, and Eclipse, were dropped before delivery in favor of the star names the class carries today.⁷

{{photo-req side=right q="NASSCO San Diego shipyard 1980s conversion" caption="National Steel and Shipbuilding Company's San Diego yard, where several SL-7s were converted into fast sealift ships" alt="Shipyard cranes and dry dock at NASSCO San Diego"}}

Conversion work ran from 1984 to 1986 at NASSCO and Avondale, adding the ro-ro ramps, cranes, and reinforced vehicle decks described above.¹ USNS Algol was the first hull converted, delivered to Military Sealift Command on 19 June 1984, and went on to become the first fast sealift ship to take part in a European exercise, a shakedown role that previewed the class's real purpose, rushing heavy armor across an ocean on short notice.⁶ The last of the eight ships entered service in 1986, giving the Fast Sealift Squadron its full complement four years before it would be tested for real.

Operation Desert Shield gave the Algol-class fast sealift ships their defining moment. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the eight ships of the class carried out the opening act of the American military buildup that became the Gulf War, delivering roughly 13 percent of all cargo shipped between the United States and Saudi Arabia during the operation, an outsized share for a fleet of only eight ships.¹ USNS Altair and USNS Capella departed Savannah, Georgia on 17 August 1990 carrying equipment of the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), the vanguard of the American buildup into Desert Shield.⁹

{{photo-req side=right q="M1 Abrams tank loading ro-ro ship 1990 Desert Shield" caption="Army vehicles loading aboard a fast sealift ship during the Desert Shield buildup, 1990" alt="M1 Abrams tank being loaded onto a ro-ro cargo ship"}}

That first sailing was not smooth. Loading Capella at Savannah on 12 August 1990, Army logisticians had estimated the ship's cargo weight without accounting for the fuel and ammunition riding along with the vehicles, and the overloaded ship settled into the harbor mud as the tide went out.⁹ Activation of the ships also took six days rather than the four days planned, and heavy weather plus a wait at the Suez Canal cut the transit's actual speed to about 23 knots instead of the class's usual 30-plus.⁹ Altair and Capella still reached Saudi Arabia by 27 August, with Algol arriving 4 September and Denebola 6 September carrying the rest of the 24th Mechanized's equipment.⁹

{{photo-req side=right q="Suez Canal ship transit map Persian Gulf 1990" caption="The Suez Canal route used by fast sealift ships transiting from the United States to the Persian Gulf during Desert Shield" alt="Map of the Suez Canal and Red Sea shipping route to the Persian Gulf"}}

The worst incident of the deployment struck USNS Antares, which broke down in the middle of the Atlantic while carrying much of the 24th Mechanized's M1 Abrams tanks. The ocean tug USNS Apache towed her to Rota, Spain, where Navy Seabees and soldiers cross-decked her cargo onto Altair, which was returning empty from Saudi Arabia. Altair then delivered the tanks roughly three weeks later than planned, a delay that illustrates how thin the margin was even for a purpose-built fast fleet.⁹ Fast sealift ships went on to support later American deployments into the 1990s and 2000s, including humanitarian and peacekeeping missions to Somalia and the Balkans and early sealift for the post-2001 campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.⁴

The United States Navy, through Military Sealift Command, operated all eight Algol-class ships from their delivery in the mid-1980s until 2007, crewed throughout by civilian merchant mariners rather than uniformed sailors, standard practice for MSC's sealift fleet. On 1 October 2007 the Maritime Administration (MARAD) took over operation of all eight ships, and by 1 October 2008 every hull had been transferred into the Ready Reserve Force, re-flagged from USNS to civilian SS prefixes.¹ In reserve status the ships sit in reduced crew, ready to activate within days if called for a real deployment or exercise, the same posture that let Altair and Capella sail within a week of Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

{{photo-req side=right q="Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse Baltimore 2024 ships" caption="Cargo ships trapped in Baltimore harbor after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, March 2024" alt="Collapsed bridge wreckage blocking a harbor with cargo ships behind it"}}

The class briefly returned to headlines in March 2024, when the container ship Dali struck and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, blocking the harbor channel. Two Algol-class ships, SS Antares and SS Denebola, were among the vessels trapped inside the port for weeks afterward, a reminder that even reserve-status sealift ships can be caught by events entirely outside their control.⁴ The episode fed into a broader, ongoing debate in Washington about whether the United States has enough sealift capacity left for a major overseas conflict, given how old the Algol class and the rest of the Ready Reserve Force have become.

Retirement is now underway. Starting in February 2024, MARAD began consolidating the class at the Beaumont Reserve Fleet in Texas ahead of removal from the Ready Reserve Force, and by late 2025 several hulls had already left service, SS Bellatrix and SS Altair were transferred to Brownsville, Texas for scrapping in October 2025, and SS Pollux has a planned deactivation in the fourth quarter of 2025 followed by a scrap sale in the second quarter of 2026.¹⁰ All eight ships now carry non-retention status. A nonprofit group, SL-7 Expo, has proposed preserving one hull, most likely the ex-Sea-Land McLean/Capella, as a maritime museum and STEM education center rather than sending every ship to the scrapyard.⁸

{{photo-req side=right q="Beaumont Reserve Fleet Texas laid up ships" caption="Reserve fleet vessels laid up at Beaumont, Texas, the Algol class's final homeport before retirement" alt="Rows of laid-up gray cargo ships at a reserve fleet anchorage"}}

The Algol class and the Watson-class vehicle cargo ship represent two different answers to the same sealift requirement, and the difference comes down to a straightforward trade between speed and volume. The Watson class, part of the Navy's purpose-built Large Medium-Speed Roll-on/Roll-off (LMSR) program that entered service starting in 1998, tops out around 24 knots, nearly ten knots slower than an Algol-class ship at full power, but carries close to double the vehicle stowage area on a hull of similar length, because the newer design was never compromised by having to reuse a 1970s container-ship hull form.¹¹

That trade matters operationally. A fast sealift ship reaches a distant theater roughly a third faster than an LMSR covering the same distance, useful when the first days of a crisis matter most, while the Watson class, and the smaller Bob Hope-class vehicle cargo ship built to a similar diesel-powered LMSR standard, move a larger single load per hull once the initial rush is over.¹¹ The Navy has never chosen one design over the other, it has run both classes side by side inside the Ready Reserve Force for exactly this reason, fast movers for the opening days of a crisis and higher-capacity ships for the sustained buildup that follows.

Is the Algol-class fast sealift ship still in service? Partially, and not for much longer. All eight ships remain nominally in the Ready Reserve Force but carry non-retention status, and MARAD has been actively scrapping and deactivating hulls since 2025, with the whole class expected to be gone from reserve status within a few years.¹⁰

How fast is the Algol-class fast sealift ship? Each ship sustains speeds above 33 knots, making the class the fastest large cargo ships in the US fleet and among the fastest ever built, a legacy of their original design as record-setting SL-7 container ships in the early 1970s.³

What is the Algol-class fast sealift ship's cargo capacity? Roughly 195,000 to 207,000 square feet of vehicle stowage per ship, enough for more than 700 Army vehicles including M1 Abrams tanks, loaded and unloaded through four onboard cranes and roll-on/roll-off ramps rather than a container port.^4,5

Who built the Algol-class fast sealift ship? The hulls were built in 1972 and 1973 in Dutch and West German shipyards for the American shipping line Sea-Land as commercial SL-7 container ships, then converted for military use by National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego and Avondale Shipyard in Louisiana between 1984 and 1986.^8,1

What is the Algol-class fast sealift ship's unit cost? The Navy paid $207.5 million in 1981 for the first six hulls, including thousands of shipping containers and chassis absorbed as part of the deal, working out to well under $40 million per hull at a time when the ships were bought as surplus commercial tonnage rather than built new.⁷