USS Shasta (AE-33) Photos
This page collects the USS Shasta photographs into a dedicated archive so the ship, crew, and my time aboard her can stand on their own. The Shasta years came before the merchant marine career that makes up most of this site, but they belong in the record.
The USS Shasta (AE-33) was a Kilauea-class fleet ammunition ship, 564 feet in length, built at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi and commissioned February 26, 1972. Home-ported at Naval Weapons Station Concord, California, she resupplied US Navy vessels at sea with ordnance, fuel, and stores across her career. Her service included Operation Desert Storm, Operation Earnest Will during the Iran–Iraq War, and drug interdiction off Baja California. She also rescued 298 Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in 1980–81. Decommissioned in 1997 and transferred to Military Sealift Command as USNS Shasta, she was scrapped in Brownsville, Texas in 2013–2014.
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USS Shasta (AE-33) — 1989 to 1992
These photographs preserve the crew and shipboard life from my time aboard the Shasta. They sit at the very beginning of the career that eventually became the merchant marine archive on the rest of this site.
Bob Keenan aboard the Shasta, one of the crew faces I wanted to hold onto.
Change of Command Ceremony aboard the Shasta, one of the formal moments that punctuated Navy service.
Me aboard the Shasta during my time on her — before the merchant marine years that make up most of this archive.
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Aboard the Shasta, the kind of working image I kept because it shows what the ship actually looked like.
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Another image from the Shasta years, from a stretch of service I still think about.
Life aboard the USS Shasta — the ship that started it all before the merchant seaman years that followed.