Help with a time travelling commerce raider.

I'm working on a small article for a RPG ezine, called The Ghostship Pirates and I was wondering if anyone here could help me.



The idea was inspired by two books; Jack Finney's novel Attack on a Queen and an account of SMS Seeadler's adventures as a commerce raider in World War 1.

• Assault on a Queen involves a group in the early 1960s salvaging a German submarine and using it to hold-up the liner Queen Mary (yes Finney, the man behind Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and Time and Again, wrote a thriller about submarine piracy). The film has a quite reasonable performance by Frank Sinatra.

• SMS Seeadler was the last of the fighting sailing ships and had a truly convoluted history. She began the war as a US flagged cargo ship, the Pass of Balmaha, was seized by the Royal Navy in 1915 (allegedly for carrying contraband, despite being en-route to Arkhangelsk in Russia). When she was stopped by a German submarine the US crew assisted in overpowering the British prize crew. The Germans kept the ship and repatriated the crew. In December 1916 the ship, renamed Seeadler and equipped for raiding, set out. Her crew bluffed their way past a British inspection and sailed through the Atlantic, down the African coast, around South America into the Pacific, capturing fifteen ships over the next nine months (with one casualty).

Anyway, in World War 2 Germany launched eleven commerce raiders (Atlantis, Coronel, Hansa, Komet, Kormoran, Michel, Orion, Pinguin, Stier, Thor and Widder). These were merchant ships converted to auxiliary warships and tasked with attacking enemy merchant shipping on the high seas, and also equipped lay mines, resupply submarines and otherwise cause trouble. It wasn't a bad strategy; such ships require far more resources to catch than they themselves need.

• If individuals go around holding up ships at gunpoint at sea, stealing their cargo and holding their crews prisoner it’s piracy; when governments do it, it’s commerce raiding. :rolleyes:

But what if there was a twelfth such ship? It's not a major change to history and outside naval historians most people wouldn't notice.

Unless it was equipped with advanced technology, based on recovered alien equipment.



Let's call the ship SMS Odin, it fits with the Kriegsmarine practice.

Now based on the other ships used we can determine a few details of the ship. She'd be around 12-20,000t displacement (perhaps a converted 'banana boat'), about 120-150m long with a maximum speed of 15-20 knots powered by either diesels (better fuel efficiency and range) or conventional steam turbines (easier to refuel) and with a crew of around 400 (to operate the armament, provide boarding parties and prize crews).

The armament would be a mix of old 150mm naval artillery and some more modern guns, plus torpedoes and mines. At least one float-plane (probably He-114B or Ar-196) and possibly a small torpedo boat. The ships carries supplies to change their appearance to a degree, adding false funnels and masts, changing deck layout and repainting.

• Such vessels were armed to overcome unarmed or lightly armed merchant ships, not slug it out with real warships. The battle between SMS Kormoron and HMAS Sydney was utterly atypical.

Given that it'll be acting as a testbed for some really advanced technology the ship's capabilities would probably be at the higher end of those available.



Now the interesting questions are; where did the Kriegsmarine get this technology? And what is it capable of? I'm handwaving this a bit, basically a UFO crashed at sea and they salvaged a few bits. The Gadget (as I call the mass of vacuum valves, small magnets, silver wire and copper tubing encasing the alien technology) is the result. It's unique (and hence won't noticeably effect WW2) and is capable of interfering with electromagnetic radiation, rendering the ship invisible, jamming radio, and 'fuzzing' the ship. It malfunctions horribly, killing the crew and leaving the ship 'unstuck' in time.



Now my original plan was for the PCs to obtain the ship by stumbling over it in the (more or less) present day as it emerges from whatever happened. The crew are gone (disappeared, disintegrated, embedded into the bulkheads et cetera) though a few survivors might be interesting. The PCs now have a ship that's capable of travelling in time.



What next? I have a number of ideas (piracy, salvage, trading) but I'm interested in any ideas from members here. All contributions will be credited if/when published.



For a start does anyone know quantities of small arms would be carried on such a ship?