Captain Trapp's HMS Charon

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inspired by the Trapp series of books by Brian Caillison

In her first description she comes off badly when compared to a partly stripped bombed hulk

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Trapps Targets

Prologue

July 1943 Jamaica

Ian Fleming stood on the dockside and surveyed the apparition in front of him at the battered tramp steamer moored alongside. The ship was slowly rusting against the quayside . Having steamed somewhat erratically into the harbour several hours previously.  Rust fought with dirt  as a prevailing  leitmotif and she would surely have been reincarnated as razor blades long ago if not for a world war which necessitated every cubic foot of shipping space to be kept in service as long as humanely possible. This was probably not the first war she had seen service in and quite possibly not the second.
She was an unlikely instrument of British Naval intelligence but their was a Swede with a private island off Nassau and rumours of a secret  submarine base  and Ian Flemming , Commander in the Royal Navy was tired of being stuck behind  a desk and he and his friend Ivar Bryce had decided that the only way to dispel these persistent rumours was to check out the location in person.
The ship which now bore the tally  S.S Charon  had been rusting gently away in a Caribbean  backwater  as a stores hulk into earlier in the year when a gentleman called Captain Edward Trapp had turned up and after some ruthless negotiation and the exchange of some gold with a half erased german eagle embedded in it and flecked with what may well have been shrapnel was exchanged for the title of ownership for Stores hulk number 47.

Commander Ian Fleming strode up the gangway onto the rust flecked nautical escapee from the cutting torches and his eyes were drawn to the incongruous sight of a neat  brass letters mounted on a mahogany board that spelled out the name of the ship. A nameplate that would not have looked out of place at Admiral's inspection of the holly stoned to perfection  deck of one of the Royal Navy 's newest Battleships.

Unbeknownst to either of the parties involved , this was to be the beginning of a strange but profitable relationship which was to see the latest S.S Charon embroiled in the  murky demi monde of international espionage and to see her getting people and things where in and out of locations no one else would be able.

May 1945  Baltic Sea

The S.S Charon thudded her way through the waters of the Baltic. She had left Neutral Sweden several hours before her destination was Kiel and she had a contract to fulfil. In her bows thudded a pneumatic jackhammer in a wooden box liberated from some Scandinavian council's Works departments. Hopefully this Heath Robinson  lash up would be extra protection from the lurking menace of German Acoustic mines.

  A Swedish flag  fluttered over her stern as her superannuated engine wheezed making a strange  "chitty , chitty bang bang" noise  eating up the nautical miles. She was on a mission for the Royal Navy , she had a lucrative contract to fulfil .

Aboard were members of a special naval unit. Their name was the 30th Assault Unit and their mission and that of their transport was to go into the ports of Germany and to liberate Nazi , military , commercial and industrial papers and technology before they fell into the hands of the enemy. Although whether the  enemy was the Soviets, the Americans, T-Force, the British Army or the Royal Air Force was none too clear.

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[zenrat]

 

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[buzzbomb]

When size matters.. wow 

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[Captain Canada]

Very cool !

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Is this what Captain Von Trapp did after fleeing Austria with Maria and the children?

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Have you not seen The Sound of Music 2 :the call of the sea .

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I'll keep an eye out for it.

There's a nuns and seamen joke here somewhere..

[dadlamassu]

Very nice.  I read the Capt Edward Trapp series by Brian Callison several years ago - every one a ripping yarn!

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I can highly recommend  the books . I suspect that in the books it was an even more of a rust bucket but I did enjoy my first series foray into weathering.