waters this week.

But it was on a peaceful mission as it was treating over 1,400 friends and relatives of navy personnel to Tiger cruises.

John S. Darrell spokesman Saleem Talbot said the group arrived on Tuesday and left the Island yesterday afternoon after off loading 534 Tiger cruisers and taking on 872 more.

He said the passengers had arrived by charter flight from Jacksonville and Norfolk. The planes were then reloaded for the return flight home.

Included amongst the seven ships were the mammoth aircraft carrier USS Enterprise -- which is over 1,000 metres long -- and the supply ship The Supply .

There was also the Spruance class destroyer Briscoe , the Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser Phillipine Sea , the guided missile destroyer Mitscher and two Oliver Hazard Perry class guided missile frigates, the Klakring and Robert G. Bradley .

Elsewhere the cable ship Sir Eric Sharpe arrived back on Friday and loaded some cable before departing Saturday for the UK. It is due to return to the Island in February.

And the car ship MV Festa is due to arrive today from Port-au-Prince with 118 cars and 55 boxes of spare parts.

The 632-foot-long Panamanian flagged vessel was due to depart tomorrow for Nassau.

In other shipping news, the Bermuda Islander arrived on Monday with 82 dry and 13 refrigerated containers which she off loaded before departing on Tuesday morning.

The Somers Isles off loaded 59 dry containers and eight refers upon arriving on Tuesday morning and left that afternoon.

She also brought in a trailered boat, 38 bundles of lumber and other miscellaneous building materials.

The Somers Isles will spend the Christmas week in dry dock at Charleston, South Carolina before returning to service on New Years Eve.

And the Oleander arrived on Sunday with 121 dry containers, 34 refers, six flagpoles, three cars and some structural steel. She departed on Tuesday.

TIGER FLEET -- The aircraft carrier the USS Enterprise this week led a convoy of US Navy ships to Bermuda to disembark and then take on civilians and relatives. The seven-ship convoy arrived on Tuesday and disembarked about 500 people before taking on another 870 as part of a US Navy Tiger Cruise. All the ships, which were anchored around St. David's Head, left Bermuda for Norfolk, Virginia, yesterday afternoon.