Warship With Two Hulls

Back on a previous thread I had made mention of an Incat vessel that was being leased by the US Navy for evaluation;

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showpost.php?p=33263&postcount=5
"Here's a couple of reasonable ideas for the new generation littoral ships, and maybe scalable down to smaller combatants.
1)Joint Venture HSV-X1


2) Tri-Hull vessel Triton
http://www.naval-technology.com/proj...trimaran7.html

Well here is the latest version HSV-2 Swift
http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/7702.htm

Portsmouth is currently playing host to one of the US Navy's latest warships. The enormous 300ft HSV2 Swift catamaran arrived on Monday to prepare to a military exercise in the Arctic Circle. During the training exercise, Swift will be home to 60 Royal Navy personnel, comprising staff from the Mine Countermeasures Squadron, divers from Fleet Diving Unit 02 and engineers from Fleet Support Unit 01. Commander Peter Williams, in charge of the mine countermeasures force, said: "Her high speed of up to 50 knots and ability to provide engineering and stores support at sea without needing to go alongside offers tremendous flexibility to the way we will operate."

 

Down here two photos of civil uses in Spain.
Fred Olsen's tri transports 1350 passenegers and 341 cars. Maximum speed 40.4 kn
Transmediterranea's wave piercing cat, carries 900 passengers and 265 cars. Speed 36 knots.
A link where to get a fastferries data base: http://www.fastferryinfo.com/

 

You'll like this General Dynamics LCS...
(Page: http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/littoral/)

 

Brian - I take it you mean the 'Real' Portsmouth not some hybrid imatation, as produced in various ex colonial countries, personnally I could never see the atraction of emergrating to a strange and foreign land to get away from all the bad things in the old one then giving the place the same name? But people did it which is why we 57 Plymouths in the world alone (few of which even stand on a river let alone one called the Plym, which incidentally is one of the least assuming little ditches I've ever come across)!

Quite frankly I cannot see any need for a 50 knot vessel in mine countermeasures other than an ability to get the f*** out of it if it all goes wrong! (unfortunately by the time you realise this it tends to be to damn late! shouldn't have had your backup so close, something else learned from our American cousins?) It does also have the ability to get you to the pub at great speed on completion of the exercise of course!

As for many hulled vessels the experiment into the trimaran 'Trident' seemed to be going well them suddenly faded into the background! Was reported to be a nice stable gun platform, fast seaworthy and all sorts of other desirable points . . . .but. . . .