For operational modal analysis (OMA) comparisons of simultaneous measurements versus roving sensor (or multi-setup) measurements have rarely been reported. The present paper presents experimental results from an OMA obtained from a measurement consisting of 45 sensors simultaneously measured on a ship in operation. The modal parameters are estimated and compared for the full dataset, and three artificial roving tests based on the full dataset using a multi-reference Ibrahim time domain algorithm. The first test is composed of five datasets that are parallel in time, hence consistency between the datasets is guaranteed. The second test is also parallel in time but with two datasets, and the third test is composed of the same two datasets, but serial in time, hence consistency between the datasets is not guaranteed. It is shown that using a measurement strategy with roving sensors can result in similar global modal parameters as those obtained using the full dataset. The variance in the damping ratio estimates, however, is considerably larger when roving tests are used.