Heavy-lift ship

Its ballast tanks can be flooded to lower the well deck below the water's surface, allowing oil platforms, other vessels, or other floating cargo to be moved into position for loading (float-on/float-off).

[5] The first was the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts, which was nearly sunk by a naval mine in the central Persian Gulf on 14 April 1988.

[6] Eleven years later, MV Blue Marlin transported the U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Cole from Aden, Yemen, to Pascagoula, Mississippi, after the warship was damaged in a bombing attack on 12 October 2000.

Since there are no US-flagged heavy float-on/float-off ships, the U.S. Navy normally relies on its Military Sealift Command to charter them from the world commercial market.

[5] In 2004, Blue Marlin carried the world's largest semi-submersible oil platform, BP's Thunder Horse PDQ, from the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering shipyard in South Korea to Kiewit Offshore Services in Ingleside, Texas.

One of the company's vessels, Mighty Servant 2, capsized and sank after hitting an uncharted single underwater isolated pinnacle of granite off Indonesia in November 1999.