Any Navy heads?

[Sgt Anjay]

Any folks with intimate knowledge of navy life, past (I think even Age of Sail expertise might apply) or present?

Specifically, I was wondering at Carpenter and his Tokugawa-class ship, and any insights to an officer serving on one ship for that long a period of time.

[Tim Wing]

I'll hit this one up when I have some time. (I'm in the Army, but I do have a bit of "Squid" knowledge as well.)

[TheElf]

Any folks with intimate knowledge of navy life, past (I think even Age of Sail expertise might apply) or present?

Specifically, I was wondering at Carpenter and his Tokugawa-class ship, and any insights to an officer serving on one ship for that long a period of time.

What do you mean specifically?

[Seto Kaiba]

Any folks with intimate knowledge of navy life, past (I think even Age of Sail expertise might apply) or present?

Hm... I've got some relatives (cousins, mostly) serving in the US and British navies, and a friend of mine's on the curation staff at a military museum. What exactly is your query... I can bounce it off them if you'd like.

[Jefffar]

I can comment more on historical conditions, which may relate more to a Navy in which ships are in unexplored territory, unable to return to home for several years.

[Sgt Anjay]

Well, to get more wordy about it...

how might the way ships are crewed and the terms of the officers who serve aboard them, presently or in the past, be contrasted and compared with the impression we are given of an officer (i.e. Major Carpenter) serving on a ship for 15 years. Additionally, extrapolating from the way ships are and/or have been crewed and the terms of the officers who serve aboard them, what does it say or could be implied/assumed about the Expeditionary Forces that Carpenter served on a ship for that span of time?

[TheElf]

Well, to get more wordy about it...

how might the way ships are crewed and the terms of the officers who serve aboard them, presently or in the past, be contrasted and compared with the impression we are given of an officer (i.e. Major Carpenter) serving on a ship for 15 years. Additionally, extrapolating from the way ships are and/or have been crewed and the terms of the officers who serve aboard them, what does it say or could be implied/assumed about the Expeditionary Forces that Carpenter served on a ship for that span of time?

I suppose it depends on what time period you are contrasting. You've mentioned age of sail(past), but also modern times (presently). I think you'll get some different contrasts.

Speaking on modern Navies, the main difference would likely be to time served by carpenter versus time served by a Skipper in today's Navy. Today, COs are only in command for a relatively short time. Carpenter was likely CO for a long time, but we don't really know that. It could be that prior to his departure for earth he was a newly appointed Captain. Though I think he does say he'd been on board his ship a long time, that doesn't necessarily mean he'd been the CO that entire time.

I think the age of sail would have the most in common with Carpenter's situation. If we assume he'd been the CO for a long time, then he'd be very similar to a Royal Navy Captain, or Post Captain from the Napoleonic times. Think Master and Commander. Carpenter would be totally responsible for the conduct, and good order of his men, supply, Judicial procedure, and the planning of operations and combat. Since we don't know much about what new canon Robotech Expeditionary times were like, I think it's all supposition until something comes out that characterizes those forces.

[glitterboy2098]

for life aboard the ship, i'd suggest looking into descriptions of life aboard aircraft carriers and life aboard submarines.. living aboard a starship like the tokugawa's is likely to have aspects in common with both. the ship is big enough that ypu can assume a lot of the conditions of a carrier are present in regards to living spaces, work spaces, etc.. but as a spaceship, you have the element of being fully enclosed for long periods, away from communication, and surrounded by a hostile environment. (researching some stuff on space travel wouldn't hurt either.)

from a space travel side of things.. this site is handy because it collects real world science and information on space and scifi related topics. if you read through it, you can get an idea of how things might work in general, which you can then apply the specific situation of robotech to. it also has a lot of examples from other scifi novels, movies, and games that you can draw on for inspiration.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

[Seto Kaiba]

how might the way ships are crewed and the terms of the officers who serve aboard them, presently or in the past, be contrasted and compared with the impression we are given of an officer (i.e. Major Carpenter) serving on a ship for 15 years.

Viewed from the perspective of a modern, post-World War II Navy, a fifteen-year tenure on the same ship would be very much out of the ordinary. These days, it's pretty much the province of fiction for an officer to serve on one ship for so long. Your average tenure for, say, a commanding officer of a modern carrier is about three years... usually less. Typical tours of duty for navy personnel involve six months to a year in the field, then a rotation to port for ship maintenance and exercises for a month or two, then a rotation back to the field, lather, rinse, repeat for three to four years until your term of service is up.

Major Carpenter being on the same ship for fifteen years without being rotated away to a "shore" posting for a couple years between tours would be HIGHLY irregular.

Additionally, extrapolating from the way ships are and/or have been crewed and the terms of the officers who serve aboard them, what does it say or could be implied/assumed about the Expeditionary Forces that Carpenter served on a ship for that span of time?

Well, that suggests a few things... none of them especially good for the UEEF:

• Assuming he hasn't been rotated out to a "shore" posting for several years somewhere in the middle, Major Carpenter must be an abnormally dedicated career soldier or someone whose term of service was extended due to wartime considerations.
  
• To have ended up assigned to the same obsolete, rear-echelon junker for fifteen years, Carpenter is likely someone whose career has hit a brick wall and HARD. Either he has some very powerful enemies among the UEEF brass or he is a VERY poor soldier whose superiors banished him to a posting where his incompetence would have a minimal impact on the rest of the troops. Carpenter's task force of obsolete ships being all the UEEF could spare from the Invid front strongly suggests the latter case... that he, and his forces, were the troops the UEEF felt they would miss the least.
  
• If his service on his ship was continuous for the entire fifteen year period, that suggests the UEEF of the early 2030s did not have sufficient manpower to rotate troops out to "shore" postings, or insufficient "shore" to have shore postings on. It also potentially suggests that there is very little "upward mobility" for individuals once a command rank is achieved. (This may tie into Edwards' allegations of nepotism in the UEEF in various RT sources.)
  
• In conjunction with the apparent situation that the UEEF was "stranded" in deep space with few ports that could be called "home", Major Carpenter's abnormally long term of service on one ship may indicate the UEEF is suffering a critical manpower shortage. He may have kept his post for so long due to a very severe shortage of trained officers (and/or a lack of alternative employment for human troops living out there in space).

[glitterboy2098]

it could also be that starships as big as the tokugawa (which is not much smaller than the SDF-1 was) are used for longer range/longer duration missions, and spent much of those 15 years away from the main command areas on various tasks (like say mapping) where promotions couldn't always come with transfers.

alternately, Carpenter might have started his tour on the ship at a lower ranking post, and got promoted up without transfer.

or it could be figurative speech.. the ship certainly had 15 years of service, but do we know carpenter was on it the whole time?

[Seto Kaiba]

it could also be that starships as big as the tokugawa (which is not much smaller than the SDF-1 was) are used for longer range/longer duration missions, and spent much of those 15 years away from the main command areas on various tasks (like say mapping) where promotions couldn't always come with transfers.

Possible initially, but the Tokugawa-class was supposedly relegated to transport duties later on, due mainly to it being pretty rubbish as a warship. If it were originally a long-duration ship, it would be much more likely that crew would be rotated out once it was retasked. Generally speaking, the longer a ship is out there in the field without putting into a port for maintenance and to give the crew downtime, the less effective the ship and crew become.

Thus far, we haven't seen anything resembling recreational facilities aboard any of the UEEF ships... which suggests they probably have to put into port fairly frequently to keep their crew from going mad under the stress.

[Sgt Anjay]

Ok, so Carpenter's implied situation does not mesh well with modern naval assignments.

If the situation of an officer assigned to one ship for something like that length of time most compares to an "Age of Sail" one, then it makes sense to explore that relationship. Anyone have some good info or sources for how assignments worked in that context? TheElf?

Thanks for the link, glitterboy2098, useful stuff. I would think Carpenter had started at a lower rank and made his way up to Major, but then again if the Age of Sail one is the better paradigm from which to examine the situation I don't know how much that would apply.

IIRC, it is implied that Tokugawa-class ship has either been his home or was considered such for the 15 years in the scene where they're abandoning ship while it's sent on the final run that takes out a Robotech Master Mothership. Though of course that doesn't mean he's never been off it, just that it's been considered "home" that whole time however much "shore time" he/they may have had. For all I know he could have spent lengthy stays at colonial outposts or factory satellites or whatnot, but never considered them home. Then when he returned to his ship this view was affirmed and shared by his fellow crewmembers. Again, I'm not familiar enough with the conventions involved to know at what point and under which circumstances an officer would or would not consider a particular ship "home" as opposed to any ports or other more temporary assignments they might have, either under present or older points of view.

[Jefffar]

Well the UEEF uses naval ranks for most ship stations. Major is a marine rank. This anamoly could be explained by Carpenter being in charge of a Marine force and the ship being subordinated to the mission, or after casualties, there was a lack of Naval officers available and he had to take command.

But ignoring that anomoly for a moment, a Major or equivalent naval rank is also rather junior for a ship of the size and capability that was seen (or the marine group it may have been carrying) hinting that he may have had the command under unusual circumstances, such as the death of the commander, critical shortage of senior officers or a mutiny.

In regards to the old days of long voyages without the opportunity to return to port, there was still frequent changes of the ship's roster, partially due to frequent casualties. Officers would typically change ship when promoted, serving under a new captain in order to learn more of the art of seamanship in what was essentially an apprenticeship program.

[Seto Kaiba]

Ok, so Carpenter's implied situation does not mesh well with modern naval assignments.

In truth, it doesn't really mesh well with naval assignments from the age of sail either. Even if he was a low-ranking officer when he first joined the crew, he would've have found himself transferred a couple of times to different ships of the fleet to replace losses among higher-ranking officers on other ships, or as part of his training. Staying on one ship for so long would have been highly irregular, unless it were one of the multi-year exploratory missions of the Age of Sail, which were often commanded by lower-ranking officers expected to spend several years way from their home port... though none went THAT long.

What his supposed situation most resembles is, frankly, the Federation Starfleet's practices in the Star Trek universe. Jean-Luc Picard, for instance, spent 22 years serving aboard the Stargazer, and climbing its command hierarchy from helmsman all the way up to her commanding officer.

Again, I'm not familiar enough with the conventions involved to know at what point and under which circumstances an officer would or would not consider a particular ship "home" as opposed to any ports or other more temporary assignments they might have, either under present or older points of view.

Because of regulations governing crew rotation and reassignment, a modern navy crewman wouldn't be likely to consider the ship itself "home". "Home" would be the port the ship operates out of. Even men from the Age of Sail would be unlikely to think of the ship itself as "home" if they were officers... press-ganged crewmen are another matter, however, though I doubt the UEEF resorted to forced conscription.

[Jefffar]

Even in the days of slow around the world voyages by sail, barring a disaster, there would still be frequent stays at port and a chance to transfer to a new ship at voyage's end after a few years.

15 years with a ship as 'home' implies some kind of failed colonial mission or similar in which they were unable to reach safe harbor for some reason.

[Sgt Anjay]

15 years does seem to be a rather unprecedented span to spend on one ship in any case. Though, of course the limit of Age of Sail exploration missions is that Earth and it's oceans, while certainly huge by the standard of sail-ship conveyance, is only so big. Space, meanwhile...is so much bigger, to put in my entry for understatement of the year. Its not kosher to keep sailors on one ship that long when you can only ever be months away from one of your ports; but what if you are in fact years away, and you don't in fact know how far away what you're looking for is?

Or of course you could whip up any number of scenarios for a ship to sustain damage and have to limp back to an outpost that should only be months away and have the trip take years, after which some would put that ship in their rear-view and never want to see it again...while others would grow inconceivably attached to the ship. Humans can be funny about those things. And "home" is a nebulous concept to begin with.

For comparison's sake, though, it might be worth at least looking at a timeline of an early long-range exploration voyage; I'm going with Magellan's.

It left in August 1519 with five ships and 270 men. Near as I can tell, they were away from Spanish ports from September 20 when they departed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda until three years later on September 22, 1522 when the Victoria alone returned to Sanlúcar with 18 men. They were away from any ports or major settlements at all from September 1519 to about April 1521. The captain of the Victoria at its return had been a subordinate officer who indeed moved up due to losses on the voyage (this, despite taking part in a mutiny against Magellan at one point and doing five months hard labor in chains).

Certainly no 15-year trek, but to bring it back to my first point, there was only so much Earth to go around, and clearly they were intended to keep going however long it took.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 years does seem to be a rather unprecedented span to spend on one ship in any case.

Carpenter may be rounding up too... if his ship was part of the initial navigational survey unit, the longest he could've been out in space was 14 years.

Its not kosher to keep sailors on one ship that long when you can only ever be months away from one of your ports; but what if you are in fact years away, and you don't in fact know how far away what you're looking for is?

Even if it's not "your" port, established practice for long-haul voyages in the age of sail was still to put in at any non-hostile port for resupply and to give the crew some R&R. It's unlikely that the ships under the command of Major Carpenter were separated from the bulk of the UEEF forces... they weren't long-range exploration craft (either never were, or weren't anymore), they were a Transport Squadron. The UEEF's forces had access to multiple friendly planets from some non-specific point in time, so one has to wonder why there were no shore assignments... by 2044, the UEEF had a substantial presence on Tirol, including research and development facilities and an orbital shipyard. As part of a transport group, the ships that were part of Carpenter's task force should've been operating in fairly close concert with the UEEF's core fleet.

Taken in that light, it suggests that the UEEF lacked sufficient manpower to rotate crew and still keep the ships of their fleet at an operating crew level. Serving for fifteen years on the same ship would be about four to five times the average tenure for a officer on a warship.

[Sgt Anjay]

Carpenter may be rounding up too... if his ship was part of the initial navigational survey unit, the longest he could've been out in space was 14 years.

The Robotech Masters encounter a ship of human design in interstellar space by 2013. Carpenter's episode happens more than 15 years after that. But it is possible the quote of Carpenter's ship being home for 15 years is rounding up, just like its possible to read too much into the word "home".

Also, it was a lieutenant with Carpenter that says the line about it being their home for 15 years, not Carpenter himself.

It's unlikely that the ships under the command of Major Carpenter were separated from the bulk of the UEEF forces... they weren't long-range exploration craft (either never were, or weren't anymore), they were a Transport Squadron.

No they weren't. The Transport Squadron that arrives from deep space is a completely different episode. Carpenter is from the Pioneer mission.