Imagine the TOS Starfleet

Actually, that's right! Republic belongs on the list too!

Now, to answer your question:

From "Obsession"

KIRK: Ensign Garrovick is a ship-command decision. You're straying out of your field, Doctor.
MCCOY: Am I? I was speaking of Lieutenant James T. Kirk of the starship Farragut.

From "The Immunity Syndrome"

SPOCK: Doctor, even I, a half-Vulcan, could hear the death scream of four hundred Vulcan minds crying out over the distance between us.
MCCOY: Not even a Vulcan could feel a starship die.

From "Court Martial"

COMPUTER: Ship nomenclature. Specify.
KIRK: United Starship Republic, number 1371.

 

Good call on all three counts. We can presume from her number being so different that the Republic is a different type, but then again there's that Constellation to consider.

 

My personal explanation is that early on the Enterprise is under Earth Command (UESPA) and later under Federation command, much as an American military unit can be assigned under UN auspices today. "Starfleet" might well be a generic term such as "Army", applicable to any armed power's forces.

 

Agreed, Kirk mentioned the "combined service" in response to Christopher bringing up "the navy."

FWIW, according to the memo Harvey posted a while back, the behind-the-scenes intent was for Antares to be a merchant vessel.

 

Fascinating. I guess that's that, and we should take the Antares uniform shirts as secondhand or coincidence.

 

That's not the point. You wrote "Solely from information from TOS, we know: ... (Constitution Class)"

I don't know how you think you/we "know" that some of the starships you listed belong to the "Constitution Class".

All I do know "solely from information from TOS" is that the TOS Enterprise belongs to the "U.S.S. Enterprise Starship Class" according to the bridge plaque.

I see, so I assume you consider the possibility that it also could be "16" instead of "18"? I wish we had some real high resolution scan of the original negative to settle this uncertainty.

@ Praetor

The merchant marine uniform of the Antares popped up later during TOS and exactly where you'd expect to see such a uniform - on Space Station K-7

Bob

 

Yeah, having similar uniforms would certainly be in keeping with real-world precedent:

 

Heh, great example. Who are those guys?

 

Captain Ian North of the SS Atlantic Conveyor and Captain Michael Layard, RN. Atlantic Conveyor was used to transport helicopters and supplies for the British forces in the Falklands war. Captain North died abandoning ship after she was hit by missiles.

 

But ship doesn't equal a naval vessel, just that it was of Tellerite origin. Mudd held a Master License and could pilot a spaceship, but that doesn't make him a member of Earth's space fleet. But his ship could be described as an Earth ship.

 

Ok, fine. So there are eight known classes of ship like the Enterprise that were shown on screen, all possibly belonging to the "starship class" of vessels. Is that better?

 

I'm reminded of the impression I constantly received when I first watched TOS - namely, that the Enterprise type was the biggest and best thing Starfleet had, and moreover, the only real "Starship" design. Sure there were other types of ships, but they were just spaceships, not fancy Starships.

I'm not convinced this was intentional, mind you, as much as a combined result of budget limitations not showing other ship classes, and the effort to make Starships (and by extension, the Captain and crew of said ships) something special. Still, it would be somewhat similar to the Hornblower model which we know was somewhat referenced for TOS.

Still, does anyone know more about the Royal Navy during the time in which Hornblower is set, that we might fight useful in our extrapolation?

 

It was built around having strong fleets in strategic locations, so the biggest, strongest ships spent most of their time on their stations. The vessels that operated independently and undertook the kind of missions that make for interesting stories were usually the smallest types.

 

I never got that impression, more the Enterprise was just one of many. But I've alway thought of Starfleet as having many thousands of starships.

Or mid-sized, if you think about it, the Enterprise under Kirk undertook a fair share of little "shit jobs" that the pride of the fleet likely wouldn't have. Transporting princesses to their wedding, doing med exams on isolate archaeologists, making deliveries to penal colonies, etc..

But the thing is we're not just dealing with a small number of references, Earth ships, Earth bases, Earth outposts. Even after the UFP was brought into existence. So they can't just be casually dismissed.

In the first season of TNG there was still mention of Earth colonists.

In the (non-canon) comic books and Star Trek Online, the Federation sends ambassador to Federation members. After retiring, Picard is the ambassador to Vulcan.

In TAS's Yesteryear, Federation members exchange ambassadors with each other.

True, but it doesn't exclude the possibility. The Enterprise is called a Earth ship and is a naval vessel.

 

@ Dukhat

Thank you! And also thanks for compiling that list on a short notice.
I guess we have to wonder whether the hull lettering is really useful for spotting numbers from the distance as the similar kind of numbering on the starship status chart makes it rather difficult to tell "6" and "8" apart.

@ Praetor

During Nelson's/Hornblower's era of the Royal Navy the sailing ships were mostly distinguished by the number of guns they carried. A "first-rate" like HMS Victory or the fictional HMS Defiant (wall painting in "In a Mirror, Darkly") would carry 104 guns, a second-rate 90-98 guns and a third-rate 64-80 guns.

All these ships had in common that they were "ships-of-the-line", i.e. they were considered powerful enough to engage the enemy fleet in the traditional parallel lining and broadside exchange (Nelson broke this rule and therefore won at Trafalgar in 1805)

@ Avro Arrow

Here is another reference to add to the list, i.e. "Starship Archon" 100 years prior to TOS.

And Pike's injury occurred on a cadet vessel, "old J-class starship".

I'm very confident that the Matt Jefferies explanation on this TOS pre-production sketch, i.e. Enterprise belongs to the 17th Federation "cruiser" design series, reflects the original TOS pre-production intentions that had the Enterprise be a member of the "Cruiser Class" (The Making of Star Trek). For the series they settled for "Starship Class" and this would make the Archon a member of an older "starship" design series.

By 23rd Century standards - this was discussed in the Oberth Class-missing-link Tech thread - the Archon would, of course, no longer qualify as a starship by contemporary standards ("old J-class starship").
If we want to apply the Hornblower analogy this makes perfect sense, because a ship of the Royal Navy that was considered a "first-rate" by 1600 had been downgraded to a "third-rate" by 1700.

I agree that "Starship Class" (or "Destroyer Class") tells us little.
Of course the first digits on the hull tell us more (e.g. 17th design) and then we had these alphabetic classifications like the aforementioned "J-class" which either is just a letter or a short form of "Jefferson Class" or something like that.

But again, according to "continuity guru" Bob Justman (in The Making of Star Trek) they were talking about the 12 ships of the "Enterprise Starship Class".

And what does the bridge dedication plaque of 17-01 say? "U.S.S. Enterprise Starship Class"

I fail to understand why the class ship's dedication plaque has to read "U.S.S. Enterprise Enterprise Starship Class".

Bob

 

Yeah, I think you guys have proven my youthful impressions are a dead-end alley as far as extrapolation are concerned.

 

So, in the Napoleonic War era of Hornblower, Ships of the Line Of Battle (later abbreviated to "Battleships") were 1st, 2nd, or 3rd rate. Frigates were 4th or 5th rates, Sloops, Snows (rhymes with cows, not crows), Barks, Brigs, and all the other non-SHIP vessels were 6th rate. Frigates were the biggest ships to lie outside the Line, and the most versatile. Battleships went to a station, then stayed there for a deployment, as part of a group. Frigates were assigned in groups and individually. Frigates sent on an independent deployment, or cruise, became known as Cruisers.
So Kirk's Enterprise was definitely NOT the biggest thing Starfleet had. it was the biggest and best ship sailing solo on independent operations. But bigger, better, more capable battleships (with tighter leashes), bigger, better, more capable research ships (with watchdogs), and other types should also exist.

 

Not having HD, and 16xx numbers being used so long, I prefer to keep Intrepid as 1631, Excalibur as 1664, etc. It also fits my favored theory melding the hull numbers and sources. As Baton Rouge starships refit to Connie specs, 16xx works, with the FJ numbers being the intended replacements. So when 1664 Excalibur gets scrapped after the M5 incident, 1705 gets built.
But if we go with 18xx, then FJTM is just wrong, and Connies are potentially spread out from 1700 to 1897. It also means Reliant inherited Excalibur's hull number, and that different designs are even more interspersed than previously thought.

 

Could this be a possible rationalization of starship vs. Starship Class? The Royal Navy had all kinds of ships in the 18th and 19th centuries; however, only a select few were "Ships of the Line." Those were special ships had their own distinction and, as Robert describes, different ratings.

So TOS has spaceships and starships; however, Starships as in the Starship Class are a distinct breed. They are the 23rd century equivalent of a Ship of the Line. There are only 12 like Enterprise in the fleet because they are so rare and special. Oh, sure, there are other space ships, but they are inferior when compared to the Starship Class.

Just tossing this out there as a possible rationalization.