Canterbury (TV)

This page is about the TV ship. For the books incarnation, see Canterbury (Books).

Books spaceship	TV spaceship

“	A behemoth of a ship, the Canterbury is a retooled colony transport. Once it had been packed with the people, supplies, and dreams of a civilization, shipping our ancestors beyond the moons of Saturn. Now, the Canterbury flies in a shadow of its former grandeur, hauling glaciers to supply mankind with the essential water it needs to survive.	„
	— ^[1]

The Canterbury ("Cant") was a former colony ship which was converted to function as an ice hauler traveling among the Belt and Outer Planets in service of the Pur N Kleen corporation in the 24th century.

Specifications and functions

The Canterbury was powered by four dual small Epstein Drive boosters for axial acceleration and also had a number of reaction control system thrusters to enable relatively quick rotational maneuvers. The spacecraft was capable of a sustained 30g acceleration during emergency maneuvers.

The Canterbury was 1,000m (3281 feet) long and had a draft of about 250m (820 feet). The majority of the ship's volume was taken up by its hollow cargo bay, which was open at one end to space.

The ship carried number of small auxiliary craft but only carried one true shuttle, the Knight.

The vessel captured ice fragments by matching trajectories with the ice chunks then slowly accelerating so the ice would enter the gaping maw that was her bow. The chunks would then be grabbed by large remote manipulator arms. Large pieces of ice were cut up, and smaller pieces of ice would then be stored on racks around the periphery of the open cargo bay. Human crewmembers in vac suits was required to assist with the capture operation to ensure that the ice was secured properly in the racks.

As with all spacecraft of the era, the Canterbury was arranged so that 'down' in the pressurized crew areas pointed aft along the direction of the main thruster so that, when under thrust, inertia created the sensation of gravity for the crew.

As a merchantman, the Canterbury carried no armaments.

Crew

The Canterbury had a crew of fifty five people. Among them were:

Captain McDowell
Executive Officer Unnamed
Second Officer Jim Holden
Pilot Alex Kamal
Chief Engineer Naomi Nagata
Navigator Ade Nygaard
Med-Tech Shed Garvey
Mechanic Amos Burton
Communications Officer Rebecca Byers
Cameron Paj
Riker
Mechanic Fen^[2]
Mechanic Jaden^[3] (Former, terminated)

History

Some time before the Eros Incident, the Cant was rigged as an ice hauler. At this time, she was carrying out regular round-trip missions from her homeport on Ceres to Saturn where she collected ice from the rings and returned the ice to Ceres for melting into liquid water for life support and industrial purposes. At this time Ceres was suffering from a considerable water shortage and the Canterbury was part of the station's life-line.

The ship was in a state of disrepair and lacked essential facilities such as a med bay due to numerous reconfigurations and corner-cutting over the years of her service. Crew members were routinely injured and complained of the dangerous operating conditions aboard, and mental illness incapacitated the ship's XO.

The defenseless ship was destroyed in an ambush by the stealth corvette Anubis while investigating the distress beacon of the Scopuli. Only five crewmembers survived thanks to being aboard the shuttle Knight which was a safe distance from the reactor breach initiated by the Anubis's nuclear assault.