Dreadnought

[Patrickivan]

If I were a betting man- and I'm not. I'd say Frigate originates from the Frigatebird. A sea bird from the genus Fregate...

If a ship were to be named after something, this bird makes sense.

Interesting guess, but it appears to be the other way around (the bird was named for the ship).

First Known Use of FRIGATE: 1583 [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frigate]

First Known Use of FRIGATE BIRD: 1738 [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frigatebird]

Actually, I was hoping no one saw the post before I deleted it... Once I saw the date for the frigate bird, I knew it wasn't early enough to be the origin and almost immediately deleted my post. Obviously not fast enough. You prick

What I'm trying to find now is the origin of Frigata. It's certainly latin in orgin. Probably just some dude's name...

 

[BK613]

If I were a betting man- and I'm not. I'd say Frigate originates from the Frigatebird. A sea bird from the genus Fregate...

If a ship were to be named after something, this bird makes sense.

Interesting guess, but it appears to be the other way around (the bird was named for the ship).

First Known Use of FRIGATE: 1583 [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frigate]

First Known Use of FRIGATE BIRD: 1738 [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frigatebird]

Actually, I was hoping no one saw the post before I deleted it... Once I saw the date for the frigate bird, I knew it wasn't early enough to be the origin and almost immediately deleted my post. Obviously not fast enough. You prick

What I'm trying to find now is the origin of Frigata. It's certainly latin in orgin. Probably just some dude's name...

Hmm this might help:

http://blog.oup.com/2011/09/frigate/

 

[throwback]

Several pages back, I stated that the Defiant-class starship was categorized as a battleship. This information comes from a graphic created for the episode "Drone". Memory Alpha has a screen grab of this graphic, and here is the relevant page:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/USS_Voyager_library_computer

 

[Timo]

So, you see, everything has some origin, even it's become obscured over time.

True enough, but uninteresting.

All that trivia-digging just emphasizes the fact that military things are not named in a fashion that would combine the "layman" meaning of the word with the observed attributes of the piece of military technology. The origin of the name is irrelevant to its current usage, and to most of its past usages as well.

And while the HMS Dreadnought of 1906 may have been given a fear-instilling name, many ships of far lesser pedigree have also received that name. There certainly is no basis for arguing that the name was chosen solely because it was descriptive of the vessel, or even that being descriptive was a major inspiration there. It's simply that navies love imposing names more than they love wimpy ones, and each and every ship type from the humblest sloop to the mightiest battleship gets attributed a boisterous name at one point or another. A fun case in point, the USN Avenger class of minesweepers/hunters: these tiny, slow and weak ships will never ever get the chance to "avenge" anything, as they have zero offensive role in warfare.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

...Also, regarding the quest to uncover the origins of "frigate", it might be pointed out that naval terminology is among the most elusive on this globe. After all, it suffers from the very special distinction of being used by the most cosmopolitan collection of human beings imaginable - the sailors!

It's already sheer hell here in my native Finland, which in its little northeastern corner of the seas only has to cope with three major foreign traditions: the Hanseatic League, our former landlords the Swedes, and our later landlords the Russians... Unfortunately, all of them got their own foreign influences as well, filling our nautical language with misunderstandings of abominations of misspellings. Thus, tracking down "frigate" sounds patently hopeless, as it involves far broader categories of seagoing cultures.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Several pages back, I stated that the Defiant-class starship was categorized as a battleship. This information comes from a graphic created for the episode "Drone". Memory Alpha has a screen grab of this graphic, and here is the relevant page:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/USS_Voyager_library_computer

Well, that's from a single screen-capture which was never really intended to be viewed in detail. I watched that episode just a few days ago, actually... and when "One" (the 29th-century borg drone) was absorbing information, this was on-screen for just a frame or so. So, I'm disinclined to treat that image as "too meaningful" (and I'll put it into the same category as using the FJ blueprints in ST-TWOK to fill in as the deckplans for the "refit" Enterprise).

Sisko actually states, IN DIALOG, what the Defiant is. His own words, in "The Search," make this abundantly clear. The Defiant is classified as an "escort."

In general, in modern naval parlance, the term "escort" is used to define a subcategory of "destroyers." And the Defiant really does fit the general definition of "destroyer" pretty well.

In modern naval parlance, a "destroyer" is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers.

"Destroyer escort" is sometimes used to define the "small end" of this category... generally, a "destroyer escort" is unable to operate independently for long periods and will only be seen as part of a battle group, while other types of destroyers can operate independently for longer periods.

This fits the Defiant to a "T"... although the Defiant was essentially an "escort" to a space station, not a carrier or similar large capital ship.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Very well put.

 

[Forbin]

It's simply that navies love imposing names more than they love wimpy ones.

The crews of Canada's Flower class corvettes such as HMCS Bluebelle and HMCS Poppy wish that were always the case.

Whenever I need a really strong historical name for a ship, I look at the list of the British fleet at Trafalgar. But my eye always lands on that one little sloop on the list - HMS Pickle.

 

[Timo]

Very well put.

..Indeed, the only thing that might be added is that apparently a destroyer outguns a battleship in Duaneverse (My Enemy, My Ally), or perhaps is a battleship (The Wounded Sky).

So again the Defiant class destroyer escort / battleship fits right in.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[blssdwlf]

Or the Defiant is an "escort battleship". Sisko just omitted the battleship part

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Well, the Defiant doesn't meet the modern definition of a "battleship," though:

n.
Any one of a class of warships of the largest size, carrying the greatest number of weapons and clad with the heaviest armor. Also called battlewagon.

or...

any of a class of warships that are the most heavily armored and are equipped with the most powerful armament.

or...

any of a class of large warships with the biggest guns and very heavy armor

or...

1) a heavily armoured warship of the largest type having many large-calibre guns.
2) (formerly) a warship of sufficient size and armament to take her place in the line of battle; ship of the line

One of the crucial elements of this is a heavily-armed, heavily armored ship... which is true about the Defiant, at least for a ship of her size, but there is no real indication that the Defiant is tougher than, say, the Sovereign, or the Galaxy... only that it's tougher "for its size." So this first bit is "debatable."


​

The second part, however, is NOT debatable. The Defiant is not "one of the largest size ships" in service, and in fact is one of the smallest capital ships, isn't it?

So, unless we're going to say that "modern naval parlance" has nothing to do with STar Trek terminology (which is inherently nonsensical, since the people writing this stuff were using modern concepts, along with some historical concepts, as their models), we have to accept that the Defiant cannot be a "battleship."

By TNG-era terms, the Defiant is TINY. Even by TOS-era terms, it's a smaller vessel. No way it's "one of the largest designs" in service.

 

[blssdwlf]

^ Is not Defiant the only "official" warship type in Starfleet? If so, then she has no peers, so to speak and could be called a battleship.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Someone just got a tad carried away with the nomenclature. The Defiant is roughly the size of a Constitution class saucer section, and could literally fit inside a Galaxy class saucer with room left over for a half dozen runabouts (hmm, there's a Dominion War fanfic in there somewhere...), so slapping the label "battleship" is a bit reckless.

 

[blssdwlf]

We could cross-check Voyager's last database refresh from the alpha quadrant against when the Defiant was introduced and/or the stage of the Dominion War. Could Voyager's database be out-of-date when viewed in "Drone" and at the time, "battleship" was the most current term for the Defiant?

As to size, if you took the Galaxy-class and strip it down to just combat functionality, it'd look probably about the same size as the Defiant. An Iowa-class battleship in the real world looks kinda small next to a cruise liner, even an armed one

 

[Timo]

Is not Defiant the only "official" warship type in Starfleet?

Only according to a sarcastic Bajoran freedom fighter.

Apart from her, our heroes could well all believe that Starfleet has never built anything but warships, and that the humblest Oberth is considered a frontline combatant in official Starfleet records. Certainly they don't contradict this interpretation in dialogue or action.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

The Defiant is the only ship Starfleet has built as a dedicated warship, as opposed to the typical starship that, while able to hold its own quite nicely in a firefight, is really more of an exploration vessel. Imagine Cousteau's Calypso with some deck guns and a bitchin' point defense system.

To put it another way, the Enterprise was built to explore strange new world, seek out new life and new civilizations, yadda yadda yadda, while the Defiant was built to kill people and break things.

 

[Timo]

...But again, only according to Kira on a bad mood.

Archer's Enterprise might have been built to explore strange new worlds, while Kirk's Enterprise could well have been designed solely to kick Klingon ass, just with enough passenger space for a few butterfly catchers to hitch a ride to an interesting planet when circumstances warranted.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mysterion]

Bottom line here is that Trek has sometimes been a bit sloppy with its application of naval terminology. They've either changed the meanings of otherwise familiar terms, or just outright mis-used them quite often.

 

[Timo]

...Sort of like the Royal Navy, then?

I mean, it was basically their idea to start calling frigates "cruisers" in the 19th century, then start calling the largest of small destroyer escorts "frigates" in the early 20th. And then they insisted on building destroyers that were smaller than their frigates...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mysterion]

...Sort of like the Royal Navy, then?

I mean, it was basically their idea to start calling frigates "cruisers" in the 19th century, then start calling the largest of small destroyer escorts "frigates" in the early 20th. And then they insisted on building destroyers that were smaller than their frigates...

Timo Saloniemi

Not to mention inventing stuff like "through-deck cruiser" to get around a restriction on building aircraft carriers:

In February 1963, the Hawker P.1127 VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft had landed and taken-off from the carrier Ark Royal and the subsequent Hawker-Siddeley Kestrel had undergone trials from the "Commando carrier" (an aircraft carrier operating helicopters) HMS Bulwark. It was therefore perfectly possible that the new "cruisers" could be used to operate VTOL aircraft. Politics determined that the new ships were carefully termed "through-deck cruisers" and not "aircraft carrier" by the RN; the cancellation of CVA-01 was intended to mean the UK's abandonment of aircraft carriers for good.