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Last week, the expeditionary sea base USS Hershel "Woody" Williams<\/em> ran aground just off Libreville, Gabon. The ship refloated and freed itself when the tide turned without further incident, a Navy spokesperson told defense news media. <\/p>\n In all, the ship was aground for about four hours. In a statement, the Navy said that no injuries or major damage were reported. The circumstances of the grounding are under investigation. <\/p>\n The Williams <\/em>was in Gabon as part of the regularly recurring Obangame Express exercise, a counter-piracy and maritime security partnership with multiple nations throughout the region. The Gulf of Guinea is an on-and-off hotspot for maritime piracy, and the international assistance mission is part of an effort to prevent any possible resurgence. <\/p>\n USS Herschel "Woody" Williams<\/em> is a launchpad for special operations and humanitarian assistance. She began life as a civilian-crewed Military Sealift Command vessel, but was commissioned into Navy service in 2020 because of the nature of her mission set. She is forward-deployed to Souda Bay and is assigned to U.S. Africa Command. <\/p>\n A sister ship of the Williams, the USS Lewis B. Puller,<\/em> supported a daring (but tragic) raid on a dhow carrying Iranian weapons in the Gulf of Aden in January. <\/p>\n Soft groundings like the one that affected the Williams <\/em>happen regularly in shipping, and naval warships are not exempt. Last July, the dry stores auxiliary USNS Alan Shepard<\/em> ran aground off Khalifa Bin Salman Port, Bahrain, when the master stepped off the bridge to get dinner. A junior officer had the conn, and maneuvered onto a soft-bottomed shoal about 20 minutes after he was handed the watch. An investigation found that he was attempting to avoid hitting a fishing vessel, and had lost situational awareness. The vessel was undamaged. <\/p>\n One month later, the destroyer USS Howard<\/em> went aground while arriving in Bali for a port call. She refloated quickly under her own power, and though there was no substantive damage, the commanding officer was swiftly removed and replaced. <\/p>\n maritime-executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, the expeditionary sea base USS Hershel "Woody" Williams ran aground just off Libreville, Gabon. The ship refloated and freed itself when the tide turned without further incident, a Navy spokesperson told defense news media. In all, the ship was aground for about four hours. In a statement, the Navy said that no …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2157,3115,3114,3653,1089,997,515,20166],"class_list":["post-43210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-aground","tag-base","tag-expeditionary","tag-gabon","tag-navy","tag-sea","tag-u-s","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/43211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}