The United Nations Naval Service is a futuristic fictional military organisation created by David Feintuch in his Seafort Saga series of novels. The organisation is heavily based on the Napoleonic-era Royal Navy, including the presence of teenage officers serving aboard major ships, largely illiterate lower-deck crewmembers, and draconian discipline. The command structure is extremely simplified compared with modern military organisations, with 'line' officers proceeding from Cadet to Midshipman (often abbreviated to 'Middy'), Lieutenant (the lowest commissioned rank), Commander, Captain, Admiral, and Fleet Admiral. The UNNS operates FTL interstellar vessels on multi-year voyages between Earth and several colonies. The series follows the career of a UNNS officer, Nicholas Seafort.
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked with maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international co-operation, and being a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. It was established after World War II, with the aim of preventing future wars, and succeeded the ineffective League of Nations. Its headquarters, which are subject to extraterritoriality, are in Manhattan, New York City, and it has other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. Its objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law. The UN is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; there are now 193.
David Feintuch was a science fiction and fantasy author and attorney.
The Seafort Saga is a series of science fiction novels written by American author David Feintuch. The novels are set from the late 22nd century to the mid-23rd century and relate the adventures of Nicholas Seafort, an officer in the (fictional) United Nations Naval Service. The series is a collection of personal accounts, usually from the perspective of Nicholas Seafort, describing Seafort's adventures, beginning as a lowly midshipman, to the elected leader of earth, and finally to the captain of the UNNS flagship Olympiad. Although most books in the series are told from a single perspective, usually Seafort's, Voices of Hope is a collection of accounts from several sources: Seafort's son, PT, the son of a friend of Seafort's, and a transient boy named Pook. Additionally, Children of Hope is narrated by Randy Carr, the son of a close friend of Seafort's.
The series takes place in the years just preceding and decades after 2200. A reformed UN has become the world government, as well as administrating Earth's colonies. Other political organizations, such as the US presidency, have only regional authority. The Secretary General is similar to a President of Earth.
Keeping with the Napoleonic-era theme, the world has become very religious, and in some cases social customs have reverted. For example, swearing in public can lead to legal difficulty, duels are legal, and the Unified Christian Church holds much sway over the public.
Technological advancements include the discovery of N-waves, which are used to travel faster than the speed of light, advanced and sentient AI, and weaponized lasers.
Interstellar travel is not in its infancy, but travel is only available to the more well off. The UNNS is the only body authorized to move cargo and passengers to the colonies. Because this artificial monopoly hurts colonial business, tensions are beginning to rise on the more stable worlds that are not dependent on Earth to survive.
The Navy
The UN Navy is the premier military body, held in higher regard than the Armed Forces. It is responsible for ships and transport, while the Army oversees space stations and ground bases.
Admission to the Navy Officer Academy can take place as early as age 12, but a 15-year-old entrant is mentioned. The young ages are to reduce the dangers of Melanoma T, untreatable cancer that is a side effect of the ship's propulsion system. Those exposed to the N-waves, which are necessary to move the ship faster than the speed of light, within a few years within puberty have reduced chances of catching the disease, although the danger remains. After a period of training of around two years, newly promoted Midshipmen will be assigned a ship to begin hands on training and the potential for further advancement. Officers hold watches on the bridge, and are responsible for piloting the ship, assisting passengers and other supervisory roles.
Crewmen are a completely different matter. They are taken from the dregs of society, often uneducated and criminal. Due to the few who would voluntarily accept the long voyages under harsh discipline, any able bodied man is accepted into the Navy as a sailor, and are offered a half year signing bonus. Sailor come from all walks of life and many ages. Their service is capped at 10 years to reduce the risks associated with N-wave travel. Sailors hold many jobs, from working in the galley, engine room or hydroponics bay, to more technical tasks such as a communications technician. Due to the low standards, the majority of sailors are simply "gauge watchers", told to report to a superior if they see any danger signs, but not able to fix problems themselves.
Ships
The UNNS operates two main types of ship during the period in which the first four books are set- the Ship of the Line and the Sloop, again using Napoleonic naval terminology. The former are commanded by Captains while the latter are commanded by Commanders (although custom dictates that the commanding officer of a ship is addressed as "Captain" regardless of his actual rank in all but the most formal situations). Ships of the line typically have three decks while sloops have two, although some larger sloops (e.g. UNS Challenger) have three decks, and are only slightly smaller than ships of the line. Cargo barges are also mentioned, huge in mass and only operated by a skeleton crew. Later in the series a new type of ship, the two deck fastship, is introduced under the command of a Commander. Very lightly armed but also significantly faster than standard ships, fastships are often used as message runners. In the final books, another new design of ship is introduced, the Galactic class. These ships are much bigger than any other ship built, with six disks and several thousand passengers and crew.
The ships themselves are frequently described as several inch high round rubber disks around a pencil. The tip of the pencil would be the cargo bays, the opposite end would be the FTL engines. The disks are where the crew, officers and passengers live and work.
Faster-than-light communication and travel are the conjectural propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light.
On three deck ships, the division is roughly: Deck One for the officers, Deck Two for Passengers, and Deck Three for the crew. Each deck would have the group's recreation, dining and sleeping facilities. However, as there are more passengers than any other group, the overload from deck two are housed in sections of Deck One and Three.
Each deck is housed in a circular disk and divided into sections, each numbered. The amount of sections depends on the size of the ship. In the event of a decompression, airtight doors will seal off each section, limiting the damage to the ship as a whole, but leaving little chance of survival for anyone trapped unsuited in the holed section.
All ship types have a complement of line officers (those in the chain of command), typically three lieutenants for a ship of the line and two for a sloop, as well as four midshipmen in a ship of the line, three for a sloop. Staff officers, not in the chain of command, include the Pilot, Ship's Doctor and the Chief Engineer.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
Regulations
The most important regulation is the naval oath, which is central to the plot of Midshipman's Hope as it binds Seafort to the Captaincy even though he considers himself incompetent and Vax Holser to be far better suited.
"I do swear upon my immortal soul to serve and protect the Charter of the General Assembly of the United Nations, to give loyalty and obedience for the term of my enlistment to the Naval Service of the United Nations, and to obey all lawful orders and regulations, so help me Lord God Almighty."[1]
Naval Regulation 64.3 is used as a plot device in Fisherman's Hope when it becomes necessary for Seafort to assume command of the UN's Home Fleet.
"When a commander in the Theater of Operations has data essential to the preservation of the main body of Naval forces, and communication with his superiors is restricted through no act or omission of his own, he may relieve his superior and assume command of all forces in the theater for the duration of the emergency. In order that authority not be divided or contested, the superior must allow the temporary usurpation of his authority. No challenge may be made to the assumption of command by any other officer under said superior, or any officer not in the theater. However, upon conclusion of the emergency the relieving officer must show by incontrovertible and conclusive evidence that his usurpation of authority was essential to preserve the main body of Naval forces. The penalty for wrongful usurpation is death. Any such sentence, once imposed, may not be appealed, commuted, or pardoned."[4]
Captain Frederick Marryat was a Royal Navy officer, a novelist, and an acquaintance of Charles Dickens. He is noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story, particularly for his semi-autobiographical novel Mr Midshipman Easy (1836), for his children's novel The Children of the New Forest (1847), and for a widely used system of maritime flag signalling known as Marryat's Code.
The Battle of Lake Erie, sometimes called the Battle of Put-in-Bay, was fought on 10 September 1813, on Lake Erie off the coast of Ohio during the War of 1812. Nine vessels of the United States Navy defeated and captured six vessels of the British Royal Navy. This ensured American control of the lake for the rest of the war, which in turn allowed the Americans to recover Detroit and win the Battle of the Thames to break the Indian confederation of Tecumseh. It was one of the biggest naval battles of the War of 1812.
In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term sloop-of-war encompassed all the unrated combat vessels, including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialized functions.
David Porter was an officer in the United States Navy in the rank of captain and the honorary title of commodore. Porter commanded a number of U.S. naval ships, including the famous USS Constitution. He saw service in the First Barbary War, the War of 1812 and in the West Indies. On July 2, 1812, Porter hoisted the banner "Free trade and sailors' rights" as captain of USS Essex. The phrase resonated with many Americans. Porter was later court martialed; he resigned and then joined and became commander-in-chief of the Mexican Navy.
The rating system of the Royal Navy and its predecessors was used by the Royal Navy between the beginning of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century to categorise sailing warships, initially classing them according to their assigned complement of men, and later according to the number of their carriage-mounted guns.
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, born Alexander Slidell, was a United States Navy officer, most famous for his 1842 decision to execute three suspected mutineers aboard a ship under his command USS Somers. Mackenzie was also an accomplished man of letters, producing several volumes of travel writing and biographies of early important US naval figures, some of whom he knew personally.
George Eugene Belknap was a rear admiral in the United States Navy. USS Belknap (DD-251) was named for him.
The second USS Oneida was a screw sloop-of-war in the United States Navy. During the Civil War, she destroyed the CSS Governor Moore and served in blockade operations. She was attached to the Asiatic Squadron from 1867–1870. She sank in 1870 outside Yokohama, Japan after collision with the British steamer Bombay. The Court of Inquiry found the officers of Oneida were responsible for the collision. Bombay's captain was blamed for not staying at the scene to render assistance - a decision that caused some controversy. Japanese fishing boats saved 61 sailors but 125 men lost their lives. The American government made no attempt to raise the wreck and sold it to a Japanese wrecking company. The company recovered many bones from the wreck and interred them at their own expense. The Japanese erected a memorial tablet on the grounds of Ikegami Temple in Tokyo and held a Buddhist ceremony in the sailor's memory in May 1889.
Rear Admiral Montgomery Sicard was an officer in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Francis William Austen, was a Royal Navy officer. As commanding officer of the sloop HMS Peterel, he captured some 40 ships, was present at the capture of a French squadron, and led an operation when the French brig Ligurienne was captured and two others were driven ashore off Marseille during the French Revolutionary Wars.
The Capture of USS Chesapeake, or the Battle of Boston Harbor, was fought on 1 June 1813, between the Royal Navy's frigate HMS Shannon and American frigate USS Chesapeake, as part of the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. The Chesapeake was captured in a brief but intense action in which over 80 men were killed. This was the only frigate action of the war in which there was no preponderance of force on either side.
Nicholas Ewing "Nick" Seafort is a fictional character and the protagonist of David Feintuch's Seafort Saga series of novels. All the books of the series with the exception of Voices of Hope and Children of Hope are written in the first person from Seafort's point of view, and give a detailed insight into the character's motivation. The first four stories cover Seafort's actions during the Fish War (2195–2202), while the next three cover isolated incidents in 2229–2230, 2241 and 2246–2247. In all but two of the books, Seafort is a serving officer in the UNNS.
Commodore Guert Gansevoort was an officer in the United States Navy during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War.
This is a list of minor characters in the Seafort Saga created by David Feintuch. It includes characters other than the protagonist, Nicholas Seafort.
A captain's clerk was a rating, now obsolete, in the Royal Navy and the United States Navy for a person employed by the captain to keep his records, correspondence, and accounts. The regulations of the Royal Navy demanded that a purser serve at least one year as a captain's clerk, so the latter was often a young man working his way to a purser's warrant. He had high status, with an office on the quarterdeck or upper deck on most ships. He was paid at the same rate as a midshipman in 1800, but by 1815 he had almost the same monthly pay as a standing warrant officer. On large ships, he had his own cabin in the gunroom, but on smaller vessels he lived with the midshipmen on the orlop deck.
The Battle of Delaware Bay, or the Battle of Cape May, was a naval engagement fought between the Kingdom of Great Britain and United States during the American Revolutionary War. A British squadron of three vessels attacked three American privateers, that were escorting a fleet of merchantmen. The ensuing combat in Delaware Bay, near Cape May, ended with an American victory over a superior British force.
Augustus Brine was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Commodore John R. Goldsborough was an officer in the United States Navy. Goldsborough was made a cadet-midshipman in 1824 and as such saw action in the Mediterranean against pirates. In one incident, while in charge of 18 men he attacked and captured a Greek pirate ship with a 58-man crew.
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