Captain's Yacht
The captain's yacht is a large auxiliary starship built into the design of several Federation starship designs including the Galaxy-class and Sovereign-class. It was docked to the underside of the saucer section. On the USS Enterprise-E, the name of the captain's yacht is the Cousteau. In 2375, the crew of the USS Enterprise-E used the Cousteau to travel to the surface of the Ba'ku homeworld.
Designer Andrew Probert came up with the concept of the captain's yacht while designing the USS Enterprise-D. Although it was never seen in use, it is labeled on the master systems display screen in main engineering, docked at the bottom of the saucer section almost directly opposite the main bridge. Probert suggested possible ways for the yacht to be used during the first season, including not showing the yacht but mentioning it in dialogue, but his ideas were rejected. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (page 164) claims that the producers almost used the yacht in TNG: "Samaritan Snare", but decided to use an "executive shuttlecraft" due to budgetary constraints. According to Patrick Stewart, the yacht would have been called the Calypso. Rick Sternbach designed similar craft into the USS Voyager and the USS Equinox, known as the aeroshuttle and the waverider, respectively. Like on the Enterprise-D, however, these vessels were only depicted on technical schematics and never seen in operation or referred to in dialog.
Ronald B. Moore notes in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual that naval tradition would insist on calling such a craft the Captain's gig rather than the Captain's yacht.
Read more about this topic: Starship Enterprise
Famous quotes containing the words captain and/or yacht:
“Young men all of us—we’ve got to be. You know why? I’ll give you two good reasons. We jump out of planes, and guys shoot at us.”
—Alvah Bessie, Ranald MacDougall, and Lester Cole. Raoul Walsh. Captain Nelson (Errol Flynn)
“I’ve given parties that have made Indian rajahs green with envy. I’ve had prima donnas break $10,000 engagements to come to my smallest dinners. When you were still playing button back in Ohio, I entertained on a cruising trip that was so much fun that I had to sink my yacht to make my guests go home.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)