Ghost Ships

[coliver988]

I thought there was a thread on ghost ships somewhere here, but could not find it.

Apparently "ghost" ships in the real world are not that uncommon, but this one is a pretty large freighter. No cargo, no crew. Imagine a ship coming out of jump in the same condition. Or found drifting in a long orbit. Or however you want to play it. I can see this as a good Halloween adventure.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ghost-ship-with-no-one-on-board-runs-aground-on-myanmar-coast/ar-BBMLhIS?ocid=spartanntp

 

[Whipsnade]

Great find. I wonder why the tug didn't report losing their tow? Maybe they were supposed to lose it and the ship was then supposed to founder? I think Brazil lost a battleship under tow and the US lost a decommissioned one too somewhere east of Hawaii.

Ghost ships are adventure seeds waiting to happen. Wil can tell us about Baychimo floating around for 40 years or so in the ice off Alaska. Sea Bird is famous where I grew up. Back in the mid-1700s, she ran up on Easton's Beach near Newport under full sail with a meal cooking on the stove, a pair of dogs still aboard, and the longboat missing along with all the crew.

The Deering is (in)famous because it happened in the 1920s and the Feds investigated it for years. There was a sailing ship hauling lumber in the late 1800s abandoned off Georgia only to remain afloat. It was spotted in various places for years until finally coming ashore in Ireland! Another lumber hauler was abandoned in the early 1900s and was later spotted drifting as far afield as the Azores. IIRC, that ship even "fought off" a couple of attempts by the US Coast Guard to take her under tow. Everyone should remember that Japanese fishing boat which drifted across the Pacific after the Fukushima quake only to be sunk by gunfire by a Coast Guard cutter.

The Joyita story is a weird one. She was a small tramp trader - sound familiar? - working the islands around Fiji and Samoa. In the mid 50s she left on a routine trip with passengers and freight only to be reported overdue. They eventually found her something like 1000 miles off course. The crew and pax were gone along with the life boats. About half the cargo was missing too.

What can I say? When your family is full of merchant marine types you here a lot of sea stories.

 

[BlackBat242]

Great find. I wonder why the tug didn't report losing their tow? Maybe they were supposed to lose it and the ship was then supposed to founder? I think Brazil lost a battleship under tow and the US lost a decommissioned one too somewhere east of Hawaii.

São Paulo was a dreadnought battleship designed and built by the British companies Armstrong Whitworth and Vickers, respectively, for the Brazilian Navy. It was the second of two ships in the Minas Gerais class, and was named after the state and city of São Paulo. São Paulo was launched on 19 April 1909 and commissioned on 12 July 1910.

In the 1930s, São Paulo was passed over for modernization due to its poor condition—it could only reach a top speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), less than half its design speed. For the rest of its career, the ship was reduced to a reserve coastal defense role. When Brazil entered the Second World War, São Paulo sailed to Recife and remained there as the port's main defense for the duration of the war.

Stricken in 1947, the dreadnought remained as a training vessel until 1951, when it was taken under tow to be scrapped in the United Kingdom. The tow lines broke during a strong gale on 6 November, when the ships were 150 nmi (280 km; 170 mi) north of the Azores, and São Paulo was lost.

USS Oklahoma (BB-37) was a Nevada-class battleship built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation for the United States Navy, laid down in 1912 and commissioned in 1916, notable for being the first American class of oil-burning dreadnoughts.

On 7 December 1941, Oklahoma was sunk by several torpedoes during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Torpedoes from torpedo bomber airplanes hit the Oklahoma's hull and the ship capsized. In 1943, Oklahoma was righted and salvaged. Unlike most of the other battleships that were recovered following Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma was too damaged to return to duty.

Her wreck was eventually stripped of her remaining armament and superstructure before being sold for scrap in 1946. The hulk sank in a storm in 1947, while being towed from Oahu, Hawaii, to a breakers yard in San Francisco Bay.

Lots of ships have been lost while under tow - here are a couple more, and a link to a very recent modern example: Two Maersk Supply Vessels Sink Under Tow En Route to Turkish Shipbreaker - December 22, 2016

USS Oregon (BB-3) was a pre-dreadnought Indiana-class battleship of the United States Navy. Her construction was authorized on 30 June 1890, and the contract to build her was awarded to Union Iron Works of San Francisco, California on 19 November 1890. Her keel was laid exactly one year later. She was launched on 26 October 1893, sponsored by Miss Daisy Ainsworth (daughter of Oregon steamboat magnate John C. Ainsworth), delivered to the Navy on 26 June 1896, and commissioned on 15 July 1896.

In October 1919, she was decommissioned for the final time. As a result of the Washington Naval Treaty, the Oregon was declared "incapable of further warlike service" in January 1924. In June 1925, she was lent to the State of Oregon, which used her as a floating monument and museum in Portland, Oregon.

In February 1941, the Oregon was redesignated IX–22. Due to the outbreak of World War II, it was decided that her scrap value was more important than her historical value, so she was sold. Her stripped hulk was later returned to the Navy, and it used as an ammunition barge during the Battle of Guam, where she remained for several years. The USCGC Tupelo (WLB-303) assisted in towing the Oregon to Guam.

During a typhoon in November 1948, she broke loose and drifted out to sea. She was located 500 miles southeast of Guam and then towed back. She was sold on 15 March 1956 and reduced to scrap iron in Japan.

HMS Warspite was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship built for the Royal Navy from 1912 to 1915. Her thirty-year career covered both world wars and took her across the Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Pacific Oceans.

On 19 April 1947, Warspite departed Portsmouth for scrapping at Faslane, on the River Clyde. On the way, she encountered a severe storm and the hawser of the tug Bustler parted, whilst the other tug Melinda III slipped her tow. In storm force conditions Warspite dropped one of her anchors in Mount's Bay, which did not hold, and the storm drove her onto Mount Mopus Ledge near Cudden Point. Later refloating herself she went hard aground a few yards away in Prussia Cove. Her skeleton crew of seven was saved by the Penlee Lifeboat W. & S. There were several attempts to refloat her but the hull was badly damaged. She was later scrapped in place.

 

[Lycanorukke]

Apparently "ghost" ships in the real world are not that uncommon, but this one is a pretty large freighter. No cargo, no crew. Imagine a ship coming out of jump in the same condition.

I would think more along the line of 'Ghost flights' with aircraft - such as Helios 522.

The ship emerges from jump and then maneuvers safely into orbit and just sits there. When boarded they find the captain - (who has been dead for a week) at the helm - and the crew missing.

 

[Whipsnade]

Lots of ships have been lost while under tow...

Some by accident and, more interestingly, some on purpose.

Thanks for additional info on Oklahoma and Minas Gerais. I'm glad they weren't faulty memories on my part. Sad that Teddy's Bulldog ended that way. Warspite was a stubborn bitch her whole life. She lost rudder control at Jutland and steamed two complete circles between the opposing gun lines while the German fleet fired at her.

 

[Timerover51]

I would think more along the line of 'Ghost flights' with aircraft - such as Helios 522.

The ship emerges from jump and then maneuvers safely into orbit and just sits there. When boarded they find the captain - (who has been dead for a week) at the helm - and the crew missing.

Or everyone dead and you have a case of "Ten Little Indians". Who did it?

 

[Grav_Moped]

Or everyone dead and you have a case of "Ten Little Indians". Who did it?

The niftiest variant on that was one that I'm sure I read somewhere on these boards, but can't find it.

Ship appears at the 100D limit, with an inbound vector but not maneuvering.
There are no crew or passengers aboard.
There are signs of struggle (some gunfire damage, some bloodstains) in the crew and passenger compartments, and indications of minor efforts to clean up afterward.
The cargo manifest indicates the ship was carrying some very valuable cargo.
The cargo hold is completely empty and all surfaces therein have a mirror-polished surface finish.
The cargo bay doors are all properly locked and sealed.

Spoiler:

Careful inspection will reveal that both the inner and outer iris valve doors of the personnel airlock from the cargo bay to the exterior are open by a few centimeters -- someone overrode the safety interlocks and exposed the cargo hold interior to Jumpspace. Somehow, everyone on board was inside the cargo hold when that happened. Apparently, the geometry of Jumpspace is such that all of the contents of the cargo hold could be sucked out through a tiny opening...

 

[Whipsnade]

The niftiest variant on that was one that I'm sure I read somewhere on these boards, but can't find it.

I glad you came back and added that spoiler because I was going to ask you what happened!

 

[Brandon C]

Although apparently not a true story, the Octavius is a good basis for an adventure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavius_(ship)

OTOH, the story of the SS Valencia after she sank translates well to tales told by old spacers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Valencia

 

[McPerth]

Not that we lack such adventures among the published ones...

Just a few (for MT):

• Challenge #44: "Lost Treasure Ships of the Abyss" (not adventures, just posible ships for them).
• Challenge #46: "H.P.P.E." and "Fated voyage": 2 adventures including Ghost Ships.
• Traveller's Digest #14: "Ghost Ship" adventure

Spoiler:

All of those adventures have a psionic component

 

[Ulsyus]

I had considered throwing out my group receiving a weak transmission that could be traced out to a source possibly beyond the Oort cloud of wherever they were, originating from a vessel that had transitioned back into normal space after having its jump path blocked by a rogue planet, not enough fuel to make another jump to their destination, then the resulting problems of having insufficient low-berths for everyone on board to go into while the vessel made an N-space transit to the nearest star system, arriving in said Oort cloud a considerable amount of time later.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I glad you came back and added that spoiler because I was going to ask you what happened!

I originally didn't include it because I figured that since it had appeared elsewhere here, that it was already spoiled.

Whether this works in anyone else's TU depends on how Jump Drive effects are handled. It's really only plausible if the drive is treated as a surface effect (the hull grid is what keeps Jumpspace at bay) rather than a volumetric effect (jump bubble).

It also raises the question of what happens if you open an airlock to Jumpspace and then close it again -- can you trap an airlock-sized bubble of Jumpspace inside? If so, what happens when you open the door again in normal space?

My initial reaction: Thousands of years of interstellar travel demonstrate that you Never Do That because Unspecified Bad Things Happen.
My follow-up thought: How would one weaponize those Unspecified Bad Things That Happen?

 

[Whipsnade]

I originally didn't include it because I figured that since it had appeared elsewhere here, that it was already spoiled.

If it had already appeared elsewhere, you, the guy who remembered it, still weren't able able to find it. That means the rest of us would have even less luck and that means I'm glad you added the spoiler.

Whether this works in anyone else's TU depends on how Jump Drive effects are handled.

True, but everyone always borrows a concept and fiddles with the details. gchuck posted a superb plot hook a week or so ago, for example. That post then sparked a discussion which that saw everyone praising the hook and mulling over what tweaks they'd need.

It also raises the question of what happens if you open an airlock to Jumpspace and then close it again -- can you trap an airlock-sized bubble of Jumpspace inside? If so, what happens when you open the door again in normal space?

You answer that in your next sentence. Players might not like that answer, but it's the answer.

My initial reaction: Thousands of years of interstellar travel demonstrate that you Never Do That because Unspecified Bad Things Happen.

That's the answer. There is nothing, no wrinkle, no short cut, no loophole, the players believe they've thought of hasn't already been suggested, tested, and failed thousands of times before. Players don't want to hear that but sometimes they have to.

My follow-up thought: How would one weaponize those Unspecified Bad Things That Happen?

Among other things, a computer virus. Not Virus, but a virus. You jump and a "poison pill" hidden in one of the ship's many computers starts counting down. We recently talked about not how automated the setting's ship are but how automated they must be. The alarm goes off and all the airlocks open, the jump drive "scrams", grav plates play pong, life support releases toxins, or any one of many other things or many other combination of things.

 

[Timerover51]

The niftiest variant on that was one that I'm sure I read somewhere on these boards, but can't find it.

Ship appears at the 100D limit, with an inbound vector but not maneuvering.
There are no crew or passengers aboard.
There are signs of struggle (some gunfire damage, some bloodstains) in the crew and passenger compartments, and indications of minor efforts to clean up afterward.
The cargo manifest indicates the ship was carrying some very valuable cargo.
The cargo hold is completely empty and all surfaces therein have a mirror-polished surface finish.
The cargo bay doors are all properly locked and sealed.

Spoiler:

Careful inspection will reveal that both the inner and outer iris valve doors of the personnel airlock from the cargo bay to the exterior are open by a few centimeters -- someone overrode the safety interlocks and exposed the cargo hold interior to Jumpspace. Somehow, everyone on board was inside the cargo hold when that happened. Apparently, the geometry of Jumpspace is such that all of the contents of the cargo hold could be sucked out through a tiny opening...

I would get really suspicious of a "mirror polished surface finish" on all surfaces of the cargo hold. That is one area that is going to see a lot of surface scratches, dings, and dents, which are not worth the bother to do anything about.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I would get really suspicious of a "mirror polished surface finish" on all surfaces of the cargo hold. That is one area that is going to see a lot of surface scratches, dings, and dents, which are not worth the bother to do anything about.

Ok, didn't quite explain it as well as I should have: The "Event" scoured and polished the surfaces; gouges and such remain but it's as though someone took a nanoscale floor buffer to everything. I'm not sure how it would have affected plastic or nonconductive components such as switchplates or keypads, or video terminals for that matter, but it wouldn't have been beneficial. And conduits with plastic switchplates would allow propagation of The Event into the rest of the hull, so...

...at some point you'd have to invoke Rule of Cool and/or the MST3K mantra ("It's really just a show, I should really just relax.") and let it go.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Among other things, a computer virus. Not Virus, but a virus. You jump and a "poison pill" hidden in one of the ship's many computers starts counting down. We recently talked about not how automated the setting's ship are but how automated they must be. The alarm goes off and all the airlocks open, the jump drive "scrams", grav plates play pong, life support releases toxins, or any one of many other things or many other combination of things.

That's orthagonal to my question, but useful. Reminds me of the Niven short story "Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation".

Spoiler:

Yes, it's technically possible to build a time machine, except Reality Itself will stop you before you complete it.

(Also, in the real world, the math doesn't quite work.)

Well, anyhow...
Let's say you can capture bubbles of Jumpspace in a bottle. Would that bottle make a useful missile warhead, like a very localized Jump Projector?

Alternately, when you come out of Jumpspace, the "bubble" collapses to zero dimensions and takes the volume of spacetime it occupied with it. Whatever structure contained it implodes like a submarine at crush depth only faster and moreso -- with all of the matter of the innermost surface layer of the container attempting to occupy a singe geometric point simultaneously.

High energy physics ensues.

 

[Whipsnade]

Thanks to the 'net, I've been nosing around "ghost ship" stores from the modern era. The stuff from the 19th Century or older is fun, but it's often hard to sift fact from fable. When you toss out all the ones due to catastrophic accidents - like rapid decompression aboard aircraft incapacitating everyone - and the usual money/insurance scams - like the freighter which slipped it's tow and yet wasn't reported mentioned earlier in this thread - most of the remaining ones feature solo/small crews aboard private/pleasure craft in remote locations.

Our increasingly interconnected world means that large numbers of people aboard commercial ships and aircraft have a harder time disappearing so the only mysteries left are those small ships with a few people aboard in out of the way places. (Note to the Usual Suspects, I wrote harder and not impossible. We all know about certain Malaysian airliners.)

A catamaran yacht, the Kaz II, with three men aboard left northeast Australia on a sailing cruise to Australia's west coast. The first leg of the cruise was just a few hundred miles, but something happened. The vessel was spotted adrift near the Great Barrier reef by a helicopter 3 days after leaving port. It may have been also spotted adrift by commercial fisherman only 1 day after leaving port. The Aussies got a boat out to the derelict 2 days after the helo's report and found a scene out of the Twilight Zone.

The cabin table had place settings and food on it. The engine was running. A laptop was running. The radio, GPS, and emergency systems all worked. All the life jackets were still onboard as was the yacht's small boat. A shirt and eyeglasses were casually laid on a countertop. The only odd thing found was a partially shredded sail. The laptop held a video recording made the day of departure. It had panned the horizon showing enough landmarks for the investigators to pinpoint the location where the footage was shot.

The footage also showed none of the three men wearing life jacket despite choppy seas.

Nothing can be proven, but the best guess is all three men went over the side without any flotation devices either by accident, while trying to recover someone else who'd gone over the side, or some combination of the two. Once they were all in the water, Kaz II sailed on without them.

There have been several similar incidents over the last quarter century or so. A few experienced long haul solo sailors have gone missing with their boats found long after contact was lost with them. One, a Yugoslav, had checked in by radio on News Years Day only to be never heard from again. His boat was found at the end of April the same year without him aboard and with a log entry he'd made on January 2nd. Just a few years ago, a yacht with it's owner's corpse aboard was found adrift off the Philippines. Just how long that man had been out of contact wasn't known but the autopsy suggested he'd been dead for "only" a week or so.

How do these morbid tales work in Traveller? One word: Belters.

People working and living alone or in small groups aboard small, usually elderly, ships in the mostly in backwater fringes of mostly backwater systems. Any wonder why the survival roll is so hard?

The players come across a silent Seeker hanging off a minor planetoid. The power plant is offline, the batteries are dead, any fuel is gone. It's cold too, radiated down to "ambient" in the rock's shadow. The personal effects aboard suggest a crew of two, but where are they? Maybe down on the rock buried alive when a portion of that "flying rubble pile" shifted? What could have been worth enough to risk an excavation there?

What's the story behind that slowly tumbling belter buggy spotting in Arglebargle Theta's ring system? It's claimed someone saw it years ago but didn't have time to investigate. Gami swears he's got sensor readings though.

Is that an x-boat? Even though Caliburn doesn't have an x-boat link? Wasn't one lost along the Biter-Caladbolg route just before the war?

 

[Whipsnade]

Let's say you can capture bubbles of Jumpspace in a bottle. Would that bottle make a useful missile warhead, like a very localized Jump Projector?

So instead of causing the entire ship to jump like the T5 weapon, you just cause parts of it to jump?

Nasty!

 

[Grav_Moped]

Thanks to the 'net, I've been nosing around "ghost ship" stores from the modern era. The stuff from the 19th Century or older is fun, but it's often hard to sift fact from fable. When you toss out all the ones due to catastrophic accidents - like rapid decompression aboard aircraft incapacitating everyone - and the usual money/insurance scams - like the freighter which slipped it's tow and yet wasn't reported mentioned earlier in this thread - most of the remaining ones feature solo/small crews aboard private/pleasure craft in remote locations.

Our increasingly interconnected world means that large numbers of people aboard commercial ships and aircraft have a harder time disappearing so the only mysteries left are those small ships with a few people aboard in out of the way places. (Note to the Usual Suspects, I wrote harder and not impossible. We all know about certain Malaysian airliners.)
...
How do these morbid tales work in Traveller? One word: Belters.

...
Is that an x-boat? Even though Caliburn doesn't have an x-boat link? Wasn't one lost along the Biter-Caladbolg route just before the war?

Good observations.

The IISS would like the XBoat's databank back, and will escalate the degree to which they'll insist on its return...

Also, consider the possibility that it wasn't a misjump, but rather that the tender wasn't able to get to it (having been damaged or destroyed due to military action -- there was a war going on...)

I'm working out details on an ancient derelict -- no, not that ancient: Sindalian Empire. They were big in the central coreward end of Trojan Reach Sector a couple of thousand years ago (from a Golden Age standpoint), and achieved TL 13 standard before they collapsed. The Sindalians are interesting from two perspectives: First, their empire ended in ruthless biological warfare. Second, they had been and gone before the Third Imperium expanded into the region so they didn't experience the Psionics Suppressions, potentially meaning there's relic psionic technology to go with the residual biological warfare agents...

 

[JimMarn]

That's orthagonal to my question, but useful. Reminds me of the Niven short story "Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation".

Spoiler:

Yes, it's technically possible to build a time machine, except Reality Itself will stop you before you complete it.

(Also, in the real world, the math doesn't quite work.)

Well, anyhow...
Let's say you can capture bubbles of Jumpspace in a bottle. Would that bottle make a useful missile warhead, like a very localized Jump Projector?

Alternately, when you come out of Jumpspace, the "bubble" collapses to zero dimensions and takes the volume of spacetime it occupied with it. Whatever structure contained it implodes like a submarine at crush depth only faster and moreso -- with all of the matter of the innermost surface layer of the container attempting to occupy a singe geometric point simultaneously.

High energy physics ensues.

At least one physicist on Discovery Science channel has come up with a theory that time travel is possible. But you don't travel back into your own past, you travel back in time to a parallel universe's you.

First step; find some negative energy.

Dr. Kaku I believe it was. Theoretical physicist.