Mesa occupation

Relax wrote:

SWM wrote: David has said that it is not possible to turn a slave ship into a legitimate freighter without reconstructing the interior extensively.

1) Where

I draw that conclusion from this text in Crown of Slaves (bolding added for emphasis):

David Weber wrote:Nor was it possible to conceal the fact that a ship was a slaver. That was what the "equipment clause" was all about, because the nature of her "cargo" was such that any slaver had to be designed differently from a normal cargo hauler or legitimate passenger vessel. The old shackles and chains of the slave trade on Earth in pre-Diaspora days might no longer be needed, but the design of the ships themselves, with their multitude of security measures to forestall any slave revolt, was simply impossible to disguise.

That was true even leaving aside the peculiar design whereby hundreds--sometimes thousands--of unwilling human beings could be ejected into space.

That final sentence makes clear that there is a lot more equipment and design features necessary on a slaver than just the forcible ejection system, features that cannot be easily removed or hidden. Even if there is no ejection system, you can't easily convert the ship into a legitimate freighter.

There is a vast difference between being able to switch between freighter and passenger hauler compared to ripping out said cargo bay dividers for passenger accommodations, (sleep, toilet) and being a freighter.

One is simple(ripping out), the other, as you rightly point out is very hard if not impossible.

So let's think about this. An 8MT freighter has (Iirc) 32 million cubic meters of space inside. Assume you only allocate 20 million cubic meters for cargo of all types. If you assume decks are 3 meters high and you only allow the amount of space per person in the dwellings in that notorious hell-hole called the nation of Hungary you need 60 cubic meters per person. So you can only fit in 333,333 people crammed in like the average citizen of Hungary. (Hungary was chosen because 20 square meters works well. )

Depends on what would need to be done to redesign the ship.

1st, the gas system:
If you are pulling out a significant amount of internal bulkheads to the slave quaters area, you are probably also going to be removing all of the related enviornmental, power and communications lines to those systems. This presumes that other than being "bolted" to the interior framing of the ship structures, they are segragated from the regular ship crew and operations areas. You wouldn't want a valve to stick open and flood non-slave quaters with gas if you used the gas.

The gas has to be stored somewhere and that storage (even if only several large containres of the gas) has to have connections with controlling valves etc leading it to the several sections of air delivery/recovery for the slave sections.

Pull the tanks. Remove the delivery controls, remove the connections from where the gas feed lines enter the ventilation systems involved. Seal/weld over where the gas lines go though remaining structural members or other internal bulkheads.

There is also the "little" challange that you probably would have wanted ALL of the slave compartments fully able to be isolated from the rest of the ships enviormental systems to avoid problems like gas comming back through the air returns into the reprocessing area. That thought would include things like the plumbing systems drains/recovery to keep things from failing when the slave section (s) were violently decompressed when you open the dumping hatches.

Given that for bulk slave transport (we are not talking sticking a few slave into each of a number of semi-normal cabins), there is probably going have to either be an extremly large enviornmental system (air/water/septic/etc) for the ship or at least two sets of systems- one "normal sized" and one dedicated for the slave sections. This presumes that most slave transport is essentialy one-way and you probably don't want all that extra capacity operating at full when you only have normal crew and any actual passengers onboard. You are also going to have to deal with feeding the crew and the slaves. Probably not with the same rations but if you are dealing with several hundred, a couple of thousand (or even only 50) you still have to process the food unless you are going to give them ration bars and water plus some supplements'


2nd, the special cargo doors. This presumes that not only do you have special controls to open/close internal room and passageway doors in the slave quarters, but that all or most of those slave quarters compartments and passageways lead to one or more compartments that have the "special" evacuation doors. There would be NO AIRLOCK associated with the special doors except probably the last one or two hatches that lead to the dump compartment. That makes for some really interesting problems in securing the ship against problems. When you take out the slave compartments, you leave some interesting hatches in the external hull that may or may not be either in a good position for cargo handling AND may not be of a size for reasonable cargo handling.

Slave ships probably also are set up to carry some level of regular cargo. That requires the related internal equipment plus actual cargo doors and handling equipment.

Presuming you want to isolate the slaves as much as possible from the crew and create a high level of security, it is practical to keep the slaves in modules of compartments that have very limited physical access to the rest of the ship's habitable and operational spaces.
Making the slave areas physicaly isolated in what would otherwise be usable as general (and open) cargo holds makes a lot of sense. Ok, to convert that you have to rip it out but even if you go as basic as cutting off slave quarters internal bulkheads "almost" flush with any exterior hull of the ship and from any internal structural members, you should be able to remove the pieces and sell as scrap.

Sure, this amount of work will tell anybody who looks that both a lot of work had been done and that the ship had -at one time- been a slaver, it would have been physicaly converted such that the slave equipment was no longer aboard and the actual configuration and removal of such equipment made it not usable for the same type of operation without having to physicaly rebuilding and reinstalling such equipment in a yard type operation.

The question is: is it worth the cost and time rather than scrap the whole thing and buy a new ship from somewhere? If you have a funtioning yard (like you would have at Mesa), an offset to the cost (fines and penalties to owners under the Chartwell Convention) and willing buyers for finished product, then you have sized former slavers reconfigured as actual legitimate cargo ships. Quite a market for those in the area of the SL. Given that the Manticore Mercant Marine is essentialy all in the Haven Quadrant now, there would be markets outside (on other sides) of the SL controlled space that need functional merchant shipping:)

Just a though

The slaver that was used to free Torch in the first place, when it was taking an unscheduled stop at the Palace of Sins (or whatever it was) was pretty extensively refitted.

When Thandi boarded and had Ruth hack into the ships computers to help route them, they were still getting lost and had to turn around (repeatedly), despite having both the "this is what the ship should look like" and whatever plans Ruth could wirelessly hack from the computers.

So you've got a maze that's already vastly different from "specs", in addition to all the stuff Brigade pointed out. By the time you finish ripping out the dedicated life-support systems, the gas deployment and storage, the secure doors that only have latches on one side (so slaves can't just out-muscle the crew.. after all they might be carrying the "cargo" variants that are even stronger than Honor/Thandi) etc etc.

By that point, you'd basically just have the external shell, because you just finished ripping virtually the entire guts out. So now you've got what amounts to an empty shell, may as well finish the job and rip absolutely everything else out, so you can start fresh. Then you'd have to start building new decks, bulkheads and hatches, allocate your new life support plants (and all the ducting and covers), new transit shafts and cars, re-wire the ship entirely from scratch for everything from power and controls to communications, on and on it goes.

In theory, you might be saving some money, but I don't think it'd be saving very much. Even if it were former genetic slaves on Torch doing it "for free" just to add another ship to their fleet. Not when the Hauptmann Cartel is already building them ships at cost with no mark-ups, they've just added all those ex-SS and SLN ships to their fleet, and they've got Maya and Erewhon just a short distance away (also willing to build, and/or provide for them)

How is a standard cargo hold configured into a stand alone slave compartment a problem? It is a benefit. Makes it more valuable, not less.

It is stand alone. Slaves have no access to anything. Therefore there is no rerouting of any systems required. Otherwise the slaves would have access to the base systems and this would be ultimately stupid. Any such ship would have had the slaves overtake it long ago.

Enviro, electrical, coms will also be a simple disconnect before slashing the internals out. Why? It is a stand alone systems for the slave trade. Assuming it is not cheaper to save the internals for later use as they were probably modular built externally to begin with and then placed in a standard cargo hold. No reason it shouldn't be. Would be the cheapest solution. Don't suppose slavers are big into expensive accommodations do you? No? Didn't think you guys were insane..... most of the time anyways.

Don't suppose folks might be interested in said modular units do you for creating ultra cheap transport between systems or say brand new colonies looking to get housing during transport on the cheap? Yea, lots of opportunity to sell said equipment.

The gas systems? Here is the thing, how the Hell can anyone tell the difference between canned air emergency tanks and the tanks used to poison people? Unless the poison has to be 2 part mixed at temperature or some such there is no way possible to tell the difference. Even if it was 2 part, then all one has to do is remove the mixing equipment and keep the tanks as one now has additional emergency canned air backup. It would be blatantly stupid to remove extra tanks on a space going ship unless they were ginormous tanks and you wanted the volume back.

At worst: Just punch a hole in the tanks at worst to get around the Cherwell convention. Nothing more need be done. Not a single thing. Those tanks already have valves. At worst disconnect and sell the tanks. Tanks are always resellable. True, a 100 years ago, true today, and true 2000 years from now.

Offhand a slaver ship will be making money even when stripped as most likely they will be selling the equipment out of the cargo hold that held the slaves to begin with.

PS. An external shell is what is left over...

That is exactly what a cargo freighter IS!

shakes head in disbelief...

Relax wrote:How is a standard cargo hold configured into a stand alone slave compartment a problem? It is a benefit. Makes it more valuable, not less.

It is stand alone. Slaves have no access to anything. Therefore there is no rerouting of any systems required. Otherwise the slaves would have access to the base systems and this would be ultimately stupid. Any such ship would have had the slaves overtake it long ago.

Enviro, electrical, coms will also be a simple disconnect before slashing the internals out. Why? It is a stand alone systems for the slave trade. Assuming it is not cheaper to save the internals for later use as they were probably modular built externally to begin with and then placed in a standard cargo hold. No reason it shouldn't be. Would be the cheapest solution. Don't suppose slavers are big into expensive accommodations do you? No? Didn't think you guys were insane..... most of the time anyways.

Don't suppose folks might be interested in said modular units do you for creating ultra cheap transport between systems or say brand new colonies looking to get housing during transport on the cheap? Yea, lots of opportunity to sell said equipment.

The gas systems? Here is the thing, how the Hell can anyone tell the difference between canned air emergency tanks and the tanks used to poison people? Unless the poison has to be 2 part mixed at temperature or some such there is no way possible to tell the difference. Even if it was 2 part, then all one has to do is remove the mixing equipment and keep the tanks as one now has additional emergency canned air backup. It would be blatantly stupid to remove extra tanks on a space going ship unless they were ginormous tanks and you wanted the volume back.

At worst: Just punch a hole in the tanks at worst to get around the Cherwell convention. Nothing more need be done. Not a single thing. Those tanks already have valves. At worst disconnect and sell the tanks. Tanks are always resellable. True, a 100 years ago, true today, and true 2000 years from now.

Offhand a slaver ship will be making money even when stripped as most likely they will be selling the equipment out of the cargo hold that held the slaves to begin with.

PS. An external shell is what is left over...

That is exactly what a cargo freighter IS!

shakes head in disbelief...

Nice idea, but that's not how David describes it. Let me review it again:

David Weber wrote:any slaver had to be designed differently from a normal cargo hauler or legitimate passenger vessel. . . .
the design of the ships themselves, with their multitude of security measures to forestall any slave revolt, was simply impossible to disguise.

And, again, this is not counting the gas and cargo door modifications for forcible ejection. David is only talking here about other systems that slave ships require.

A modular system as you describe it is an interesting idea, but it is not the way Honorverse slave ships are designed.

SWM wrote:

munroburton wrote:I'm with the "don't destroy the slaving ships" side. They'd be useful for faciliating emigration from Mesa - obviously, with the gas system disabled and carrying fewer people than they would slaves.

An interesting idea. But I wonder about the reaction.

"Come on aboard. We want to move you to another planet, where you can live a safe and secure life. What? Yes, this was a slave ship. But don't worry, it isn't any more. Come on in."

Any port in a storm. If it was the only immediate way offworld for senior Manpower execs and so on who think they are about to be handed over to the Ballroom... "Why aren't we moving yet? Do I need to go outside and push?"

Obviously, Manticore would have to send an escort with each outbound convoy, to prevent another star nation from mistakening them as slave transports. Oh, but imagine the irony if half the Manpower board of directors ended up in the hand of someone well-intentioned who thinks they're slaves - they'd be stuck on another transport, this time directly to Torch!

These trips would be one-way for the ex-slaver ships. Better vessels can be summoned before they return. Blow them up or send them off to be refitted afterwards.

Upon further reflection, I don't think there's much point to allowing the slaves to leave immediately. There are just too many of them - some three? four? billion - to move more than an infinitesimal fraction. Give them to the "citizens" who wish to leave, with a 90% exit tax or something. Again, there are too many to move more than a tiny percentage, but there should be enough to exile the worst of them.

Where they would or could go is another question entirely.

SWM wrote:A modular system as you describe it is an interesting idea, but it is not the way Honorverse slave ships are designed.

So how many people are they designed to transport? Basically you would have to be constantly moving multiple 10s of thousands to justify doing any part of the ships permanently (given that a freighter main cargo hatch can fit a destroyer through it...) and a fully converted freighter would carry well over a million people. Which somehow doesn't match what they describe in the text.

Relax wrote:PS. An external shell is what is left over...

That is exactly what a cargo freighter IS!

shakes head in disbelief...

The only classes of ship that might want "nothing but the shell" would be a) planetary bombardment craft, or b) Army/Marine transports loaded with tanks, assault shuttles, and other high-bulk combat vehicles. Everything else requires just a little more put back inside the ship


First of all, you need to redesign your "slave ejection" hatches into proper airlocks so your cargo shuttles don't continually depressurize the cargo bays everytime they undock.

After that, you're going to need to do an extensive installation of internal cargo handling, so after you've unloaded from the shuttles, you can shift it from the docking bay(s) to the proper holds. This means something related to forklifts, robot arms, or related "bulk" cargo handling. You also need a crapton of grav harnesses, and push-pull tractor type things for handling stuff that's smaller, or "fragile". You'll also need to dedicated space to keep your cargo handling equipment when not in use, which at the bare minimum involves some extra walls and hatches. If it's robot arms, you'll also need to build in the rail system so you can move more than just one box at a time....

Need more internal hatches that lead to/from those cargo bays so you can check on cargo's, and inspection teams (like OBS Scotty and company sniffing out contraband) can do their walk arounds.




That's starting to sound a helluva lot more than just:
empty shell, impeller & hyper capable, X mtons - one unit