Another vote for Old Ironsides.
I also love the remarkably clean and mean lines of the Skjold Class ships!
bellybutton = navel = naval
vessel = cup = something to hold vodka in
or maybe vessel = vassal and he has Rebbeca Romjin as a slave?
RR = well she is attractive
I for one, would love to jump off to the beach from this .
Chasing women, burning villages, robbing monasteries. Those were the days…
I for one, would love to jump off to the beach from this .
Chasing women, burning villages, robbing monasteries. Those were the days…
(suddenly hamsters barge in and double posts my post. Bad hamsters! Shooo!)
HMS Tiger is often spoken of as a beautiful ship from her era. (WWI)
Interestingly, Wikipedia says she was redesigned while under construction to match the new Kongo esign, a ship cited in the OP.
Sailboat
I would have expected submarines to be obvious winners in this one. A few of the prettier ones:
Thresher (USN)
Akula (Russian)
Los Angeles class (USN)
My personal favorite when they’re not catching on fire, Victoria Class (RCN)
Now I’ll grant you, they’re all unabashed phallic symbols, but they’re really pretty underwater penises nonetheless.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the Typhoon. The thing is a beast - it’s huge, it’s fast, it’s bizarrely quiet, it can carry 20 SLBMs, and almost 30 years after it’s been deployed it’s still probably the best submarine ever made.
However, I will give props to the newest submarines in America - the aggressive and dominant-looking Seawolf and even moreso the Virginia.
I once did the Portsmouth Historic Ships tour and it’s amazing going from Victory to Warrior - only a generation or so between them and all of a sudden you’ve got light and air and headroom and a ship’s laundry, not to mention that broadside of 68-pounder smoothbores that would have made kindling out of anything on either side at Trafalgar (and they’re not the ship’s main armament). Compared to Nelson’s navy it’s like the star ship Enterprise.
I’m partial to the Yamato. Or, if you don’t like the real ship, there’s the one from Star Blazers.
For stupidest design, there’s the 1870s era Russian ship Novgorod. It was meant to be a mobile gun platform for defensive operations, but it was more like a armed bathtub. Firing the guns made the whole ship spin.
Sweet zombie jesus, that’s an odd looking ship! But you just know you would have liked to have been an observer when they were doing the initial testing of the guns, albeit at a safe distance.
Given her apparent tendancy to instability at sea combined with the spin effect of those guns I would imagine you’d have some mightily confused and somewhat green looking sailors staggering off.
I agree. The open space on the top deck of the Warrior is like a park compared to the crowded quarter deck of Victory.
As to the OP, I’ve always favored the Iowa class as well as the Yamato. It’s the turrets that push my buttons.
I’d really have to disagree with you that the typhoon was the best submarine ever built. They were the quietest Russian built sub but our Los Angeles class attack subs were quieter and had sonar suites 3-4 times as sensitive as theirs. From what I’ve read, we pretty much had every Akula permanently tailed for most of the cold war. I would have say the best sub ever made was the other you mentioned, Seawolf is a monster… just too expensive with no other superpowers around to justify.
Still… in deference to the to Typhoon/Akula, you have to say something about a submarine with it’s own indoor swimming pool. 
Meh, you can keep Building 21. I’ll take Old Ironsides, or a viking Drakkar any day. Although a classic Grecian Bireme has beautiful lines.
aruvqan, that’s a base canard. Seawolf may not have props for looks, but she gets underway, with regularity. Unlike Building 20. (Am I bitter that we got tasked to take over one of her cruises on 72 hours notice, because they couldn’t get underway? Not at all, why do you ask?) There’s something telling that the motto on the ship’s own website is: “The Most Sophisticated Communications Ship on the Waterfront.”
So there you have it, fugly and immobile. That’s a real naval building.
I think everyone thinks the ship they were on is the most beautiful. My dad and my brother were both Marines and they both think so.
My dad was on the USS Midway which is too low and wide IMO. You can’t really tell from that picture but it is really oddly wide-looking in person.
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My brother was on the USS Peleliu and I’ve got to agree with him on its attractiveness, if only because I was on it myself for 10 days.
Oh, well I was on the USS Pampanito. Here it is.
I served on the USS Ranger CV-61, I know she was not that beautiful. The BBs and some Destroyer just have the look of menace and grace that no carrier can ever match.
The classic Sailing Frigates like the Constitution are works of art. She is the most perfect wooded vessel. Strong enough to stop the weapons of her day and swift enough with a good crew to sail circles around the big Brit Man-O-Wars. She and her long departed sisters were the apex of Function and Form.
Jim
Exactly.
I’ve got it bad for tall ships and love both Star of India and Rose , at the Maritime Museum in San Diego. Farther down, there is the USS Midway, which I also loved, though it looks quite different of course.
I hope to see many more ships.