Oh forgot this detail so I will add it here
Gazela acted as a auxilliary packet ship from January of 1998 to March of 1998 ferryin supplies, personnel and messages between scattered military forces and the dozen or so naval vessels hiding along the Chesapeake
Norfolk was declared operational again and put in for minor maintenance and was then changed to the Rickover (implies April to May 1998) - and then got her new armament and paint job
So that says that there were at least a dozen or so operational USN vessels on the East Coast in the Norfolk area in the Jan 1998 to March 1998 time frame - and the Forrest Sherman DD's, five of which were recommissioned and put back into operation, didnt join the navy until Thanksgiving 1998 with what is described as a greatly swollen work force
So that means there were at least 19 operational USN ships on the East Coast in the 1998 time frame, 12 survivors of the Norfolk nuking, the five Forrest Shermans, the Hyman Rickover and the Corpus Christi which was undergoing repair in CT.
Of which the canon is giving 5 known survivors (the three Shermans, the Rickover and the Corpus Christi) - and some of the others may be the ships that Frank Frey had in Kenya (the deployment timeframe of the 173rd and the followup units in his notes suggests that possibility)
As for Hancock - she may have been one of the 12 ships or she may have already been in Europe
I highly recommend picking up A Rock in Troubled Waters - a literal gem of an article
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