The amphibi­ous assault ship USS Bataan (LHD-5) was docked here ear­lier this month. I biked over to the jetty to take advan­tage of the free tour. An 844 ft ship is pretty huge—one could spend days explor­ing it. The tour was fun, but not very well-balanced. We spent about as much time learn­ing about the Navy’s plas­tics recy­cling pro­gram (they recy­cle) and lis­ten­ing to a hygien­ist talk about den­tal care at sea (just like den­tal care on land) as we did tour­ing the cav­ernous hangar and flight deck.

The ship’s hos­pi­tal was a major high­light of the tour. Con­sid­er­ing the size of the ship, it is mon­strous (600 beds) and the med­ical offi­cer who over­sees its oper­a­tion is bright, funny, and artic­u­late. He impressed us with the many effi­cien­cies he enjoys over a civil­ian hos­pi­tal: a pri­vate ele­va­tor con­nects the flight deck with the triage room; every­thing is portable and battery-powered; his dig­i­tal X-rays can be trans­mit­ted and eval­u­ated within min­utes by on-call radi­ol­o­gists in Mary­land; and, as he put it, “I’ve got 18-year-olds that can stick an I.V.—no need to wait for a doc­tor.” With a com­pletely straight face he walked us past an oper­at­ing room in which the lights were turned on and sunglasses-clad man­nequins in scrubs were oper­at­ing on a smil­ing “patient” whose abdomen was over­flow­ing with spaghetti noodles.

The flight deck is a nice space. There are no railings—just nets down below—which puts the ocean right on the hori­zon. I don’t want to join the mil­i­tary, but I think I could live with life at sea.