The US hospital ship USNS "Mercy" has arrived at a shipyard in Portland, Oregon.
This is shown by data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a maritime radio system for automatically identifying ships, writes the media outlet gCaptain.
The ship arrived in Portland on Thursday last week, which comes after several weeks of speculation about its destination, writes the media outlet.
The USNS "Mercy" has received a lot of attention after US President Donald Trump announced on the social media Truth Social in February that an American hospital ship was on its way to Greenland.
According to Trump, the ship will take care of many sick people.
Clear sign
Trump's post included an AI-generated image of a hospital ship with the name USNS "Mercy" and an American flag.
The ship has 1,000 beds.
GCaptain describes how, according to the latest data from AIS, it has sailed north along the west coast of the United States before entering the Columbia River, on which Portland is located.
At the end of February, the ship left the city of Mobile in the state of Alabama, where it was undergoing maintenance.
According to the media outlet, the ship's arrival in Portland is the clearest indication yet that the ship's journey from the Gulf Coast through the Panama Canal was a planned redeployment to the Pacific Northwest - and not part of a deployment to the Arctic.
Not ice-strengthened
The USNS "Mercy" is expected to remain in Portland for several months, the media outlet writes.
It has already been questioned whether a mission to Greenland with the ship was realistic. According to gCaptain, it is not ice-strengthened, nor has it previously been part of Arctic operations.
Sea ice, icebergs and limited port infrastructure would pose significant challenges for a ship of its size, it says.
The USNS "Mercy" is operated by the US Navy's Military Sealift Command. It is one of two hospital ships in the fleet and has 12 operating rooms.
The sister ship USNS "Comfort" remains in Alabama, where it is being maintained.
/ritzau/
