Artist rendering of the new Matson ship design. Each ship will be 869 feet long and 115 feet wide at the beam with a deep draft of 38 feet and enclosed garage space for up to 800 vehicles.
Matson Inc. has announced that its subsidiary Matson Navigation Co. Inc. has contracted with General Dynamics NASSCO to build two new vessels for its Hawaii fleet at a price of $511 million for the pair.
One ship is scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2019 and the other by mid-2020. Both will be combination container and roll-on/roll-off ships that allow rolling vehicles to be loaded using ramps instead of cranes.
Matson is calling these vessels the Kanaloa Class in honor of the ocean deity revered in Native Hawaiian culture. It will name each after predecessor ships from its 134-year history. The first vessel will be named Lurline, the sixth Matson ship to be called that, while the second vessel will be its fifth named Matsonia.