Federation Merchant Marines/ Starfleet SpaceLift Command

[valkyrie013]

Was looking at some navy ship classes, you have your standard Destroyers, cruisers, Frigates, Etc. But what you don't usually see is the support ships out there, but they have many types of support ships.
Hospital ships, floating docks, amphibious troop transports etc.
For supply, they have Under Way fleet replenishment ships, but not really any "Cargo" ships that go from port to port like regular cargo ships. Some Under way fleet ships probably do this, but not much.

So was thinking, How the Cargo, and support ships for starfleet, and Federation planets work.
Sure you have private businesses, like Rios in Picard, Kassidy in DS9, but even with replicators you still have goods that need to be delivered, and starbases and ships still need replenishment, crew transfers, fuel delivery.
While some cargo is delivered by civilians, would the federation have a "Merchant Marine" service of cargo ships and stuff? and ships like the Ptolemies are not "Starfleet Cargo" but Merchant marine ships?
I dont know if they would be part of Starfleet, maybe there own section of Federation.

So you would have a Starfleet "SpaceLift" command that does fleet replenishment, and a civilian "Force" in a merchant marines to do other cargo services? Thoughts?

 

[Timo]

We can draw on historical precedent if we wish. Many a merchant force of yore had to double as a de facto military force on lawless waters; in the future this might be flipped. Perhaps the Federation has to fight its way to freight delivery, terraforming and theatre performance assignments alike, and has the resources for those mission types integrated to the fighting force?

On the other hand, government control over commercial shipping has generally been arranged for when there were wars to be supported; again, flip this so that now the government takes control of shipping in order to promote peace, keeping greedy merchants away from places and peoples that could mean trouble. Or in order to usher trade to regions where commercial players lack the guts to go initially.

Onscreen, we hear little of government involvement in freight hauling. But a ship crewed by people in Starfleet uniforms is identified as a "freighter" rather than "transport" in TAS "Pirates of Orion", unheard of in the military context where moving of cargo never involves freight, that is, charging for profit. Perhaps there in fact exists a Starfleet Merchant Marine (sometimes mentioned in the FASA RPGs even though never on screen), without much precedent in reality or other scifi but with possible logic behind it nevertheless?

Anything and everything is possible, of course. Googling for the Red, White and Blue Ensigns of the British could give us some ideas...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

The Ptolomy class containers are something that we only saw in fandom...

 

[Unicron]

I'm tempted to say FASA had something equivalent to a Starfleet merchant marine, though I don't recall exactly at the moment. I do recall the Orion fleet was largely made up of Klingon designs they had acquired or stolen, along with a handful of original designs and copies of some Starfleet merchant vessels.

 

[Push The Button]

The Antares from Charlie X was a merchant ship.

 

[Timo]

...That was the one thing she wasn't, amusingly enough.

We hear:

1) "cargo vessel"
2) "transport ship"
3) "the other ship"
4) "science probe vessel"
5) "survey ship"

One count of each, plus lots of mentions of "the Antares". All of the above five would be appropriate for a military vessel. It would be pretty seldom that somebody would refer to a merchant ship as a "transport", though - that's military jargon. And a military vessel probably has more excuse of being called a survey ship than a merchant one does...

In any case, both the Antares and the ship that originally crashed and stranded Charlie Evans (also called a "transport") were doing pretty weird things. Why would they be anywhere near a planet that is unknown and unlikely to either need or provide stuff the ships could plausibly transport? Why not just one but two weird detours to Thasus? This would be appropriate for a "survey ship" all right, but not for a pure "transport" let alone a merchant vessel. That is, unless both ships carried paying passengers and both skippers wanted to show them the extraordinarily beautiful upper atmosphere of Thasus for a very reasonable extra fee...

TOS makes very few direct references to merchant shipping overall. There are apparent privately owned ships hauling small cargo such as settler wives or tribbles, and then ore carriers, but we don't get good references to regular cargo services. The Astral Queen of "Conscience of the King" may or may not pick up the Karidian troupe, and ultimately reneges - what are they, pirates, or another cargo vessel making extra buck on random passengers?The general impression in TOS is that you can't get guaranteed service even if you have the money. Which might indeed call for some sort of a special government-supported service to help out the folks of the frontier...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

The Merchant Marines/Merchant Service was mentioned a couple of times in TOS ("The Ultimate Computer" and "Bread and Circuses"), so I'd suspect that they would still be going strong well into the TNG-era as well.

 

[Dryson]

Perhaps admission to the Federation as a new planet requires a certain number of citizens from the new planet to be trained in the logistics of cargo and re-supply runs to and from their planet.

Then at such a time when Starfleet feels the crews are trained, regulation starships that are part of Starfleet then replace the new planets own cargo/freighter ship fleets.

 

[Timo]

On that, it seems that UFP membership isn't particularly obligations-creating. A member world may remain completely isolationist, Ardana being a prime example of a place that would impolitely but firmly just say no to any federal demands. Plus they wouldn't send their artists and thinkers and wouldn't dare send their mining slaves, and, well, that's all folks.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tim Thomason]

The Antares from Charlie X was a merchant ship.

It was intended to be (per BTS info, never stated onscreen). But it seems that Pike served on the Antares earlier in his career, per Discovery, so unless we assume that he transferred from the Merchant Marines, it seems to have retconned the ship into Starfleet (Proper?).

 

[Timo]

There's no law against fifty ships being named Antares simultaneously. Starfleet might have one, Captain Ramarts's Reliable Shipping Company might have one, Harry Mudd might own one.

But nothing about the Antares in "Charlie X" spells merchant. Her crew wears Starfleet uniforms, she's considered a "transport" like military ships would, and if there ever was any "intent" in the writing, it was that Kirk and Ramart both worked for the same organization - even if it got called UESPA here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

1) "cargo vessel"
2) "transport ship"
3) "the other ship"
4) "science probe vessel"
5) "survey ship"

I like to think that she was an old stores ship that had be converted to the survey/science mission and so occasionally shows up as either in the records. (Thinking about how Cousteau's Calypso was an old minesweeper.)

 

[Timo]

What's remarkable there is that she's actually a second example of the same (whatever "the same" means here): the ship that originally stranded Charlie Evans on Thasus was also identified as a "transport".

What would two transports be doing, visiting a dead planet? Nobody questions the fact that the first one would have "crashed", either, supposedly all on her own and out of incompetence or technical glitch rather than due to the actions of a threat force - so, what possible excuse did she have for attempting a landing?

Yet Thasus is the center of some intrigue. It has been "probed", it has formerly been inhabited, there are "legends" of some sort of life remaining to haunt the place. Does UESPA vector ships (including transports) there at regular intervals to see if the place remains dead? Or is there an ongoing survey, yet winding down so that only transports with a token survey package are now sent, rather than proper surveyors?

That the Antares would be a full-time surveyor now is unlikely, in light of her begin repeatedly identified as a transport and cargo ship when it matters, face to face with Ramart; the tight schedule that Ramart speaks of is likely to be one of cargo delivery. Is it plausible for a former surveyor to become a transport later on? I'd rather keep on pleading the transport-temping-as-surveyor scenario, so that UESPA makes use of a full range of assets (including Kirk's mighty starship in "Tomorrow is Yesterday"!) in its surveys.

***

In our attempts at identifying the true nature of the mysterious "cargo surveyor Antares", the goalposts keep on moving. TOS-R revealed to us that this is a crewed version of the TAS cargo drones; LDS now tells us that these ships normally (?) tow long trains of containers, and furthermore operate in convoys or gaggles where multiple tugs share the same registry, just like in TAS. So possibly the most relevant thing here is that the Antares herself is not shown towing anything or having any companions -> thus is not serving in the intended capacity -> thus might be subbing as a surveyor?

Timo Saloniemi