Along New Tides: Ship Presentation, M/V Rhine Forest · 11:42am Aug 8th, 2019
Hi there folks,
Today I'll be talking about the second ship to join the fleet in my story: Rhine Forest.
Let's start off with the sad part: the real Rhine has been decommisioned for a while now. A pity truly, as she was the last bearer of the barge carrier title as far as I know. That part of the industry is now dead, doomed by inefficiency, better alternatives granted by improvements in infrastructure, and legal troubles regarding how much equipment the cargo barges needed. She was the last ship of her class.
But she lives on in fiction now! Because even I sometimes succumb to the Rule of Cool, and if a ship that carries ship like it's an aircraft carrier isn't, then what is? I'll admit liberties have been taken when it comes to giving her a fleet of auxiliaries, since the viability of such has never been tried, but a man can dream alright?
For those not in the know, the way a barge carrier like her works is that boats and barges sail to a pronged structure aft of the vessel where they're picked up by a gantry crane that then stows them in holding bays.
In real life, Rhine Forest can't complain about not having had a good career. She was built in '72 in Belgium, and as far as I know was still working as late as 2009. Not bad for a workhorse that loads 45.000 (metric) tons of deadweight. She's a big girl alright.
Apparently she mostly sailed on a line from Rotterdam to New Orleans.
In this story, the hull was bought before being decommissioned and rebuilt to modern standards in 2014 so she could operate in offshore industries. For that purpose, Rhine was fitted with a Dynamic Positioning (DP) system, taut-wire type if you're curious, so she's only good for position keeping.
Taut wire systems are basically an weight tied to a cable with a tension and angle monitor in a gimball mount. It allows a ship to retain her position relative to the 'anchor', is rather simple, but operates poorly when it's too shallow or too deep.
The rebuilding also updated much of her electronics with modern ECDIS (compulsory for cargo vessels as of now), as well as updating her propulsion system: she runs on two azimuth thrusters.
Azimuth thrusters are basically nozzled propellers put on a 360° swivel. Excellent for maneuvers, and they don't need rudders, but less efficient at achieving greater speeds. Plus: it forces a ship to use diesel-electric transmission.
Then of course you've got works that's been done after the Event when they:
- replaced the first two rows of barges with a container bay
- adapted the gantry to pick up containers
- added .50 cals all over the deck
- gave the ship an extended fleet of auxiliaries
- put a manifold on the gantry crane to perform underway fuel replenishments on auxiliaries
Story wise now...
Why a barge carrier?
As stated in the story, she's the other side of the coin when paired with Amandine. She exerts her influence at sea, while Amandine is made to deploy forces ashore.
Furthermore, port facilities in a post-apocalyptic setting will degrade overtime. Ships like Amandine will have it increasingly harder to reach ports that are not linked to colonies for maintenance. Her however? Her barges and tugs can reach remote places no ship her size should have access to. She can just stay safely in an estuary, guarded by her patrol boats, while the tugs go drop cargo further upstream.
The auxiliaries.
It's a big thing I wanted her to have, particularly the patrol boats. See, I don't believe it's possible to equip a dedicated cargo ship with sufficient weaponry. .50 cals are alright, but missile and torpedo systems, or even advanced guns like a 76 Otomelara just aren't possible. I needed them to be able to fight back if I'm to send Zeebeests at them.
Enter the interceptors.
The smaller ships, from a narrative viewpoints, should allow realistic access to remote places a full-size ship normally wouldn't bother with. And with the trawlers they get fresh fish. You don't know the value of fresh food until you've lived on dry food and cans for four weeks.
If you're curious where I got the trawler design from, it's an unused paper design an Australian company made. No idea whether they actually built it in their yard, but it fit the established criteria.
The Crew.
Rhine's got a large crew (for a cargo ship, navy ships always run on bloated crews in my opinion) with 50 souls on board, and she's got her barge department to thank for that. She had six pilots (at petty officer levels) working the auxiliaries, each of them with two ratings for assistance. They pilot their auxiliaries, plan out operations, and maintain their respective crafts.
Other departments aren't as big, though the barge department is supposed to help with the daily operations of the mothership when they're not deployed.
Rhine also has a few other oddities: she's big enough to have a doctor and nurse on board (a role filled by a medically-trained officer on most ships), and only has one cook for fifty crewmembers. Because part of the daily duties for ratings and cadets consists of assisting the cook in preparing the meals.
In the industry it's something I've only heard of on small freighters like feeders, but eh, let's go for originality.
As far as nationalities go, she's a ship that's supposed to work offshore in Africa after changing hands from a German to a Nigerian company: you've got the Western European sailors from the previous owner, a staple of the usual Ukrainians and Filipinos 'cause, you know, cheap labour and stuff, and to top it all off, they hired Liberians and Congolese folks so they'd have enough local workforce in Africa to abide to labour laws.
If you have any questions about Rhine Forest, then feel free to ask.
Last cynical bit: Looking at it with a sceptical eye, Rhine's story of a European company selling an African company some revolutionary offshore support vessel that's actually an old refurbished ship from the seventies... I call scam.
What does the purple colouring represent in the column with the creatures colourings,body type, breed etc?
5456850
Dates back a while, but if I recall right it's only a highlight I put there to remember which characters were involved in a scene at a time. Can't help it, I have bad memory.
...
So bad I'm not even sure which scene that was in fact.