Cool Boat/Real Life: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* [[wikipedia:Turtle ship|The Korean Turtle Ship]]. Its a warship with ''spikes'' on the top of it. How [[Awesome Yet Practical|awesome]] is that?

** Admiral Yi's variant was not only fully closed, but the first known ship with iron armor and built for long-range cannon fire. And a smoke screen dispenser. And one cannon on the ram, to fire ''inside'' a breached hull after ramming. "Turtle ships" were faster and more maneuverable than one would expect, due to the combination of sails and oars as well as overall good design (based on a ramming ship and not too overweighted); the Japanese ships opposing them were faster, but haven't long-range weapons and like most of their contemporaries relied mostly on boarding, so the "turtles" had enough of opportunities to ram.

* The legendary Nova Scotian schooner, the ''Bluenose''. Launched in 1921, for 17 straight years she was undefeated in any racing and fishing competitions she entered. She also starred in the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and George V's Silver Jubilee. The ''Bluenose'' has been on Canadian dimes since ''1937''.

* The ''[http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/05_02/cuttysarkG2105_468x372.jpg Cutty Sark]'', a tea clipper so fast it remained profitable to run well into the age of steam-powered boats.

 

 

* The ''Monitor'' and the ''Merrimack'', the two famous "ironclad" boats from [[The American Civil War]]; when these two ships clashed, the fight only ended because they ''ran out of ammo''.

* The nuclear ''Enterprise'' was the eight naval ship to bear the name. The seventh one that came before it (often referred to as "The Grey Ghost" and "The Big E") wasn't nuclear but was still the most decorated ship of [[WW 2]] and one of the few carriers built before the war to fight to nearly the end- it was damaged by a kamikaze strike and would have returned had the war not ended while it was in dry dock.

If your still not convinced how badass this ship is, it's name was immortalized by [[Star Trek]].

* ''Turbinia'', the first successful steam turbine powered ship. When built she was the fastest ship afloat, capable of 34.5 knots. Her builder demonstrated this at the Spithead Naval review in 1897 when he decided to arrive unannounced and [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|buzzed the assembled warships before outrunning every picket ship sent to stop her]]. This demonstration was so successful, that the Royal Navy decided that all future ships would be powered by turbines, leading to...

* HMS ''Dreadnought''. Admiral Jackie Fisher was made head of the Royal Navy because he had a plan to economize on naval expenditure. That plan involved using submarines to defend against invasions and building battleships that were bigger and faster than anything else in service. ''Dreadnought'' was the prototype of these and was probably the most famous ship in the world until the ''Titanic'' sank- when it came out other nations suspended their battleship programmes for a while to adjust to it. Hell, in naval history parlance the prewar years are often called the Dreadnought Era.

** And previous genereations of battleships were collectively renamed as "predreadnoughts". The ''Dreadnought'' also carries the distinction of being the only battleship in WWI to sink a submarine - by ramming, no less.

* Before aircraft carriers evolved into their current, more standardised, forms, one notable design was the converted ''Courageous''-class cruisers, which had two separate decks: the hangar opened directly onto a shorter flying-off deck at the front of the ship, with a longer landing deck built on the floor above. At the same time, the Japanese carrier ''Akagi'' took this a step further, with '''three''' flight decks stacked above one another. The designs proved to be inefficient, but both win major cool points.

* The ''[[wikipedia:Pocket battleship|Deutschland]]''[[wikipedia:Pocket battleship|-class heavy cruisers]] of the Reichsmarine (later the Kriegsmarine). Due to restrictions imposed by the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles, the Germans basically did everything they could to pack a battleship's power onto a boat the size of a cruiser. While this resulted in a ship with several design compromises (such as relatively thin armor), its power and capabilities were such [[Nightmare Fuel]] to the British that they started referring to the ships as "pocket battleships." The other ships of the class were called the ''Admiral Scheer'' and the infamous ''Admiral Graf Spee'' (which, to cut a long story short, was scuttled by its captain to avoid what he thought would be a losing battle). The ''Deutschland'' was later renamed as the ''Lützow''.

* The ''North Carolina'' class battleships, particularly the North Carolina herself. She was originally stationed in the Atlantic to so that she would be available to fight the Tirpitz. When the Tirpitz was a no-show, she was stationed to the Pacific, becoming the first new ship to arrive in the theatre since Pearl Harbor. From there she spent her first few months escorting the ''Enterprise.'' During the Battle for Guadalcanal, the North Carolina laid down such an incredible amount of anti-air that the captain of the Enterprise radioed in to ask if she was on fire.

* The USCGC ''Taney,'' a Treasury-class cutter and the only surviving vessel that fought at Pearl Harbor. Currently parked in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

* Two absurdly dangerous ships that don't receive much attention. The two first true minelayers, Amur and its sister-ship Yenisey (named after the rivers on Far East) carried 300 [[Sea Mine|sea mines]] each, and at that time the Russian Empire probably has the best ones. The co-designer and captain of Yenisey was a proponent of the offensive minelaying (as in, "after a minelayer's stern vanishes with the morning mist, you still have a port, but can neither exit nor enter it") and inventor of the system spawning minefields at 10 knots. When these ships were designed, the Russo-Japanese war was unconceivable. It was a weapon made to "[[Decades of Darkness|end the Great Game in checkmate]]" (together with the rest of Russian and allied Japanese fleet, of course) and most likely able to do it, not to hide in a port each morning. In the war for which they weren't made minelayers haven't much accomplishments, but 14 May 1904 Hatsuse and Yashima blew up and sunk in a minefield near Port Arthur, left by Amur on their patrol route -- and that was two Japanese battleships more than ''the whole Russian fleet'' managed to destroy at Tsushima. This minefield was mere 1/6 of the Amur's full load and not quite the sort of tactics this ship was supposed to use.

* The Italian Navy always got [[Awesome but Impractical]] capital ships (the cruisers were fast than anything in their tonnage but had little armor, and the battleships had the speed, heavy armor and more firepower this side the American and Japanese [[World War II]] battleships but had very little range), but their torpedo boats... Well, during [[World War I]] the two best battleships of the Austrian Navy left the port to engage battle with one of them embarking a troupe to film their victory, and two torpedo boats popped out of nowhere and sank the other battleship so the troupe could record that.

== With guided missiles and nuclear power, we now have... ==

* The ''Nimitz'' class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and the earlier USS '' Enterprise'', the world's first such carrier.

** Hey hey hey. If you're looking for red kings, I got some red-hulled badasses for you. USCGC ''Polar Sea'' and ''Polar Star'' are a bit older than the ''50 Let'', falling apart with age, but they can break just as much ice. Or could, y'know, if they weren't falling apart.

* The ''Iowa'' class battleships. That is all.

** To clarify, and distinguish this example from the previous mention of the ''Iowa'' Class, in 1984 Ronald Reagan was signifigantly increasing the size of the US Navy. One target of this increase were the four ''Iowa'' Class Battleships, which had all been mothballed since the New Jersey provided fire support during the Vietnam War. The ships were put through an extensive refit, completly gutting the old systems and modernizing the ships. After the refit, the Battleships were arguably the best warships the world has ever, and ever will, see, with the old armament of 16" and 5" guns being supplemented by Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, Phalanx cannons, and a helipad complete with a Sea Sprite ASW helicopter.

** Don't know why they thought the "old" armament needed help. The nine 16-inch guns could each fire a 2,000-pound projectile over 20 miles, leaving an impact crater the size of a ''football field''. [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Uss_iowa_bb-61_pr.jpg Looks as cool as it sounds].

*** Because the old armament is completely helpless against even small missile boats which would laugh at ''only'' 20 miles of range. Small missile boats can pack missiles with ranges over ''three times that much'', at least. It needed those upgrades to not be a complete sitting duck against modern weaponry. Not to mention that the 20 anti ship missiles of the Kirov class missile cruisers, which the Iowas were supposed to counter, had a range about 12 times as great as the Harpoon anti ship missiles used by the Iowas, were supersonic and were designed to be fired in salvos of 4 or 8 with all missiles in a salvo cooperating to destroy the target.

* The ''[[wikipedia:Ticonderoga class cruiser|Ticonderoga]]''-class cruisers, with their Aegis missile defence system, capable of controlling the missiles of other ships and only capable of being defeated by a [[Macross Missile Massacre]].

* The South Korean ''Sejong the Great'' destroyers, like ''Arleigh Burkes'', but with 128 VLS cells, 16 dedicated anti-shipping missiles and two choppers. It is, as of 2011, the largest surface warfare ship class to carry the Aegis combat system.

* ...and its counterpart, the US Navy's ''Ohio''-class SSBN. So damned quiet, enemy crews learned to listen for suspicious areas of completely silent water rather than trying to pick up anything aboard the boat itself.

** Four have been converted to carry over 150 Tomahawk conventional cruise missiles.

** This troper worked on the second and third Seawolf class submarines (Connecticut and Jimmy Carter). I didn't have high security clearance or access to detailed specs, not that I'd be able to share them if I did, but I have seen enough to say for certain that any of the estimates of that submarine's capabilities that I've seen are...somewhat of an understatement.

*** Though it is worth noting that the [http://www.defencetalk.com/pictures/showphoto.php/photo/929 Polar Bear that tried to make a snack out of the Connecticut] may just be the most badass of all.

** Yes the US Navy was so concerned with the results that they rented the submarine for a year to try to figure out how it does what it does and how the hell to prevent it, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1UPG7XwhWw&feature=related after that year they were not much closer to a solution than when they started.]

*** They know most of the 'hows' for what it does. The problem is, the how boils down to 'it incorporates every stealth-trick there was when they were laid down, diesel-electric engines are naturally less noisy than nuclear fission, and the Stirling engine extends their underwater endurance to lengths only (then) rivaled by nuclear submarines'. It's hard to figure out how to solve a problem that is fundamentally the exact same problem as before (How To Find A Quiet Moving Underwater Object), only harder.

* And of course the first real submarine: the German Type XXI U-Boot, designed to be submerged most of the time instead of spending most of the time above the surface like the other submarines of the time, it is the inspiration for most of the later submarines, though like many of Germany's late war projects this too was unfinshed and only two submarines made patrols where they both failed to actually sink something.

 

== When you are saving the whales... ==

** [http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/08/2787921.htm Until it got sunk].

** Not to mention now forever stuck in our memories with [[Never Live It Down|a bad paintjob,and being called the Bat-mobile]].

** [[Executive Meddling|Corporate suits]] [[wikipedia:MV Brigitte Bardot#Brigitte Bardot|weren't amused, however]].

 

== But before that/When you want get around the world in a hurry.. ==

 

Go back on board the [[Cool Boat]]. Make sure you have your seasickness pills...