The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln pulled out of San Diego on November 21, 2025, for what was supposed to be a run across the Pacific. Nine months later, roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines are still out there, still with no firm date to come home, and their families are telling reporters that some of the crew have tried to go over the side of the ship.
Not one sailor. Multiple sailors. The Navy has not put out an official number, but family members and crew describe a ship that is worn down to the bone, and reports collected by outlets covering the story point to as many as six separate attempts, the most recent coming just days before the news broke in mid-August. This is a real thing happening on a real ship, and the people closest to it are the ones sounding the alarm.
The deployment was supposed to end in May
Most carrier deployments run six to seven months, with port stops built in so the crew can refuel, resupply, and actually get off the boat for a minute. The Lincoln blew past that. It left in November as a Pacific trip, got redirected to the Middle East, and became the mobile air base parked near Iran for U.S. strikes.
The numbers are rough. Sailors logged 250 straight days at sea and supported 40 days of continuous combat operations, according to Navy figures. The ship spent 208 consecutive days at sea before it finally touched a port in Oman on July 7, which set a modern-day record for the ongoing war with Iran. The crew was told the trip would wrap up in May. May came and went. Then the deployment just kept getting extended, over and over, with no return date attached.
One wife says her husband is now on medical hold
Annabelle Loma lives in San Diego. She told reporters her husband, a 13-year Navy man, had been repeatedly overextended before he tried to jump from the carrier. He is now on medical hold, and she has only spoken to him a handful of times since it happened.
What she said next is the part that stays with you. Her husband is not worried about getting home. He is worried about getting fired. “He’s scared,” Loma said. “He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that.” She called it what it is: not fair, not right, and not what he should be thinking about right now. Loma got one call from the ship’s ombudsman after the incident and, by her account, heard nothing from anyone in the Navy for weeks afterward. She also said she puts on a happy face for her kids while feeling like she could break down any given day.
A watchstander grabbed a shipmate by the arms
Maria Rodriguez, another sailor’s wife, described a different night entirely. Her husband was on watch when he spotted a shipmate getting ready to go over the side. He called out. Then he ran, reached the sailor, grabbed both their arms, and pulled them back onto the deck before they went over. Three other sailors heard the commotion and came sprinting to help.
He did not tell his wife about it until several days later. When he finally did, the thing he kept coming back to was the sheer physical charge of the moment. “He said he hadn’t felt adrenaline like that in his life,” Rodriguez told reporters, “and he was just so thankful he was able to get to them in time.” The crew reportedly learned about at least one of these incidents through a shipwide announcement over the loudspeaker, which tells you how hard it is to keep something like this quiet on a floating city of 5,000 people.
Families packed a banquet room to confront the Navy
On August 6, about 200 relatives crammed into a banquet room at the Island Club on Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao was there in person. The meeting got tense fast. Spouses were in tears, pressing officials for one answer nobody would give them: when are our people coming home?
One moment from that week is hard to shake. During the meetings, a spouse told officials she had gotten a message from her husband that same day saying he “hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow,” according to one of the attendees who spoke to the outlet that reviewed recordings. A separate virtual meeting was held later that night for families who could not make it to the base, and the same worries poured out there too. Vice Adm. Joseph Cahill, who commands Naval Surface Forces, told families, “We hear you loud and clear regarding the impact this has on families, on service members and the long-term ability of us to sustain our forces’ health.”
It is not just the length of the trip
The complaints stack up past exhaustion. Families raised concerns about food shortages, water contamination, laundry, and problems getting mail delivered to the ship. When you are stuck at sea for the better part of a year, mail is not a small thing. It is the one thread connecting a sailor to home, and families say even that got tangled up.
Manuel Guevara said his son, another Lincoln sailor, sounded exhausted and worried the last time they talked. “I don’t want to worry that the circumstances of this deployment will get the best of my son, and he doesn’t make it back home,” Guevara said. He also flagged the same basics that keep coming up: food, laundry, living conditions. A multimedia producer named Andrew Brown claimed there is a serious crisis on the Lincoln and that the Navy is actively pushing back on reports about it. The Navy has not confirmed any of the specific figures floating around, and the Pentagon declined to comment when reporters asked, pointing questions back to the Navy.
The Roosevelt is coming, but nobody will say when
Cao did give the families one piece of information. The USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group is being prepared to deploy to the Middle East and relieve the Lincoln. That is the good part. The frustrating part is that he would not say when, citing operational security.
For a spouse who has already watched a May homecoming vanish, “a relief carrier is being prepared” without a date lands as more of the same. The Lincoln itself is a 36-year-old Nimitz-class ship, commissioned back in 1989, and it entered the Central Command area in late January before settling into the Arabian Sea. The war it is supporting kicked off on February 28. The administration originally pitched that campaign as a short mission that would be over in a few weeks. It has dragged on far past that early timeline, and the Lincoln has been carrying the load.
A senator called it a betrayal
The story reached Washington. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey called the situation “a profound failure of leadership and a betrayal of those who serve,” and added that you cannot claim to support the troops while leaving them hungry and worn out.
There is some backstory to the leadership here too. Cao has been the Navy’s top civilian since April, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Navy Secretary John Phelan after the two repeatedly clashed. So the families in that banquet room were pressing an acting secretary who had been in the job only a few months, on a crisis that had been building for most of a year.
What the Navy says it has on board
Cahill pointed to resources already stationed on the ship: deployment-resilience counselors, chaplains, and Human Factors Councils that are meant to review what is wearing sailors down and flag the risks. On paper, those exist. Whether they can hold up against 250 straight days at sea, a vanished homecoming, and combat operations running back to back is the exact question families showed up to ask.
Annabelle Loma’s line about her husband keeps circling back around. A sailor who reached a breaking point should not be spending his medical hold terrified that a burnout episode wipes out 13 years of service. That fear says a lot about the gap between what the Navy describes and what the crew is actually feeling. Cahill, for his part, told families during the meeting, “I cannot even tell you how proud we are of them.” The families answered with a simpler request. Bring them home.
As of the latest reporting, there is still no return date for the Lincoln, no confirmed count from the Navy on how many sailors have gone over or tried to, and a relief carrier being readied on a timeline nobody will share. The crew is still out there. So are the families, refreshing their phones, waiting for a call.
