The huge ship is almost 900 feet long and will carry a crew of 800 during its four month humanitarian mission.

Relief organizations from 10 nations will visit the Philippines, Viet Nam, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Micronesia. The ship's trauma center alone has 50 beds, more than twice as many as major hospitals on land.

"This trauma center is massive and it's remarkable what it's capable of. My wife is an emergency room nurse and she walks through here and just shakes her head. She can't believe what it looks like," said Bill Wiley.

"Much of our work will actually be done ashore.We'll do some work on board . Especially the surgeries and more complex medical procedures will be done on the ship. and so we'll be running helicopters back and forth to shore and boats back and forth to shore. It's going to be long days in each country we'll be spending between ten and 14 days there," said Bill Kearns.

About 20 volunteers from Hawaii's Aloha Medical Mission will meet the ship in Papua New Guinea, but one of its leaders hopes the Mercy ship will be called to Myanmar.

"This ship is just perfectly set up to deal with that sort of situation. and if the government there will let the ship in, I think it would be a fabulous opportunity," said Vernon Ansdell.

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