Maersk names tanker Peary to honor explorer's legacy

NORFOLK

It makes sense that a ship that will spend a good part of every year traveling to the Arctic and the Antarctic bears the name of the man who discovered the North Pole in 1909.

On Friday, Maersk Line Ltd. celebrated naming a recently acquired tanker the Maersk Peary for Rear Adm. Robert E. Peary at Half Moone Cruise and Celebration Center in Norfolk.

"We chose the name Admiral Peary because he was a Navy man, he was an explorer and he was somebody to be reckoned with," said John Reinhart, president and CEO of Norfolk-based Maersk Line Ltd. "We're really pleased to have the family here with us today."

Seated in a front row were six direct descendants of Peary, including two great-grandsons.

It was the company's first such ceremony in 10 years. About 380 people attended, including U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, Virginia Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton, Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim, Portsmouth Mayor Kenny Wright and other officials.

"Norfolk is the home port of the Maersk Peary, and it is proudly displayed on her stern," said Mary Reinhart, wife of the company's CEO and the ship's godmother, moments before she christened the vessel with a swing of a champagne bottle against the light-blue bow, unleashing a blizzard of confetti.

"In a sense, when this vessel departs, it will connect all of us here in Norfolk with parts of the world rarely seen or visited, except by courageous explorers like Admiral Peary," she said.

The 591-foot-long tanker can carry 11.4 million gallons of fuel. It is one of about 50 vessels operated by Maersk Line Ltd., whose business consists largely of transporting goods around the world for the U.S. military, under charter with the Military Sealift Command.

The ship was scheduled to leave early this morning for Greece.

The next stop for the "ice-strengthened," double-hulled tanker will be the South Pole, where it will deliver fuel to McMurdo Station, a U.S. research facility in Antarctica.

In the summer, it will head for Thule Air Force Base in Greenland.

The ship will make fuel deliveries to both facilities, at opposite poles, once a year, spending the rest of the year on other missions for the Military Sealift Command, said Kevin Speers, a Maersk spokesman.

While the Maersk Peary is technically homeported in Norfolk, as are all of Maersk Line Ltd.'s ships, the odds are it won't be back any time soon, and might never return here, Reinhart said.

"These ships move constantly," he said.

The company, which has about 220 employees, 200 of them in Norfolk, has been the largest single carrier of supplies to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, Reinhart said. Its annual revenues are "north of $1 billion," he said, all of it in one way or another from government contracts.

Maersk Line Ltd. is a unit of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group of Denmark, which operates Maersk Line, the world's largest cargo-shipping line.

The Maersk Peary will create about 45 jobs, at sea and on shore, Speers said. The ship has a crew of 20, plus two cadets, who rotate with other crew members about every three months.

Robert E. Peary IV, a stockbroker in Gilbert, Ariz., and one of the Peary descendants at the event, said it was gratifying to see people pay homage to his great-grandfather.

"He was quite amazing for his time," he said. "He persevered; he planned; he was organized; he was determined. In fact, he lost eight toes over his time traveling north in pursuit of his ultimate goal on behalf of the nation. He had to teach himself how to walk afterwards. It's tough to do that. So the fact that he's honored, it just makes us all feel real good."

Robert McCabe, (757) 446-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com