Straight flowin' on a boat on the deep blue sea
Bustin' five knots, wind whippin' out my coat
You can't stop me, motherfucker, 'cause I'm on a boat!"
Pretty self-explanatory: What the Cool Car and Tank Goodness is to the road, the Cool Plane is to the sky, and the Cool Starship is to space, the Cool Boat is to water, whether it's a steamship, a sailing ship, or a submarine. A sufficiently large Cool Boat may also serve as headquarters for the characters. If the hero's primary place of residence is a boat that the hero owns and can take wherever he wants across the waters, that's a Houseboat Hero. When the crew are just as cool and badass and the story is set before the production of metal ships, it could mean Wooden Ships and Iron Men.
On the "boat" vs. "ship" thing: a boat is something you can lift out of the water and place on the deck of a ship.note (Except submarines are boats, a tradition dating back to the early submarines, which were called "submarine torpedo boats" and were small enough that they could be placed on the deck of a ship. Tenders usually are too, no matter how big they are.) And remember, it's not an it, she's a she.note Expect to get called on this by hardcore Navy types. That said, ships do count for this trope.
Under no circumstances confuse this with a Nice Boat... which is something entirely different and more disturbing. Though it may depend if you like the boat... And while it is always cool to Get on the Boat in RPGs, the two tropes don't necessarily overlap.
Examples:
- For some commercials in the 90s, Cap'n Crunch had the Guppy II, a frigate that turned into a Humongous Mecha.
- The title ship of Black Lagoon, a modified 80-foot Elco PT Boat with all the armaments taken off except for the torpedoes. The ship's primary firepower consists of a two-gun-packing Dark Action Girl with an attitude.
- Red Shield's headquarters in Blood+ appears to be a huge cruise ship.
- Corsair features a rather nice fleet of boats, particularly the Belle Ayme.
- The title ship of Cowboy Bebop can double as this, as it was originally a fishing ship before it was modified by Jet for use as a bounty hunting craft.
- The Four-hundred Rabbits from Ergo Proxy, a sailing-boat that hovers over land.
- The Tuatha De Danaan from Full Metal Panic! is a state-of-the-art submarine featuring numerous missile silos, a small air force for land-based operations, and a contingent of the most advanced Humongous Mecha known to mankind. It's also a stealth submarine, meaning it has sonar-dampening hull and an ultra-silent magnetohydrodynamic drive. If that doesn't scream "cool", I don't know what does. By the 3rd Super Robot Wars Z though, it gets converted mid-way into a Cool Starship.
- Hellsing: HMS Eagle was a fairly standard aircraft carrier, until Nazi vampires took control of her and renamed her Adler. Then Alucard arrived, proceeded to unleash all hell, and turned Adler into the second coming of his previous ghost ship, Demeter.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: Joseph has a private submarine brought to the group that's outfitted with equipment and food to help them on their journey to Egypt.
- Stone Ocean: Jotaro uses a submarine provided by the Speedwagon Foundation to help Jolyne escape prison. Extraordinary circumstances lead to Jotaro being the only one to leave the prison.
- Kill la Kill: The Naked Sun, battleship of Nudist Beach. Shaped roughly like a set of shears, fueled by Hamster-Wheel Power, and has guns the size of rocket boosters.
- Heavy Cruiser Unebi of the Imperial Japanese Navy in Kurogane Pukapuka Tai. Crewed by 500 lesbians and one Zen Captain. Yes, it's a yuri comedy naval warfare manga series.
- The Nautilus of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water lives up to its status as a updated descendant of the Coolest Boat of all.
- One Piece has a number of examples, many quite cool. It's kind of required.
- There are the ships used by the Straw Hat Pirates, the Going Merry and the Thousand Sunny. Notably, Thousand Sunny carries a small fleet of smaller boats, among them a submarine. Sunny also has a jet engine and Gaon Cannon which shoots extremely pressurized (and devastating) blasts of air — both powered by cola.
- The ship that conquered the Grand Line was Gol D. Roger's Oro Jackson. It looks like a regular pirate ship with duo-mermaid figurehead and red sails.
- Whitebeard's personal ship, the Moby Dick is a ship that goes underwater. Note — not a submarine, a sailing ship. One with a hull shaped like a blue whale, but still a sailing ship.
- The Moby Dick, and many other ships including the Thousand Sunny, have a special coating that allows them to do this.
- Gecko Moria's Thriller Bark is the size of a freaking island and its swarming with zombies.
- The Golden Lion Pirates have a ship that is part of an island. Oh, and due to the power of the captain, it flies!
- The Utan Sonar and Victory Hunter captained by Shoujou and Mashira, respectively. As the name implies, the Utan Sonar has a sonar beacon that is powered by Shoujou's voice — and while the masts of most sailing ships are made out of an entire tree's trunk, Sonar's masts are actual, living trees. Victory Hunter has a giant clamp on the front (that looks like a Cymbal Clapping Monkey) that can be used to pull up stuff from the bottom of the ocean.
- The setting of the movie, One Piece Film: Gold, is set on a cruise liner that houses a massive city within it. It's so huge that the World Government even declares it as its own nation.
- During the Orange Islands season of Pokémon: The Series, Team Rocket followed the twerps around in a pedal-powered submarine that looked like a giant Magikarp. (The previous season had one episode where they had a similar pedal-powered Gyarados.) The kids themselves traveled the seas on Ash's Lapras.
- Super Atragon features two Diesel Punk super-battleships: the Ra and the Liberty. Both ships sport multiple large caliber naval guns, bow-mounted drills, and special weapons.
- Ryou's personal cruise ship in Tokyo Mew Mew serves to remind the cast and the viewer that he has money. Even Mint, who's probably richer than him, is impressed.
- Viole's team in Tower of God reach the testing area in a really cool boat. For starters, it's so cool it flies over the ocean.
- Tidal Wave is also awesome in the Transformers: Armada cartoon, and Thunderblast of Transformers: Cybertron turns into a sleek speedboat with a rocket launcher.
- There's also Tidal Wave's reformatted form Mirage from Transformers: Energon, who transforms into an awesome-looking assault speedboat.
- From Zipang we have DDG-182 Mirai
, a Japanese Self-Defense Force Yukinami-class guided missile destroyer (which is a modified variant of America's Arleigh Burke destroyers) sent back to World War II by an undetermined phenomenon. As an early 21st century warship in the mid 20th century battlefield, Mirai terrifies both the Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States Navy. In addition to that, Mirai also has a cool scout-recon aircraft, the MVSA-32J Umidori. Mirai experienced a kind of Defictionalization a few years after the series started, when the JMDF introduced a nearly identical class of ship—the Atago
guided missile destroyers.
- Batman: Various incarnations of the Batboat. Especially the ones that turn into a Batsub.
- In the Batman Leatherwing Elseworlds, Pirate Batman has the Flying Fox.
- In the Batman Reign Of Terror Elseworlds, Scarlet Pimpernel Batman has a ship with bat-shaped sails.
- Batwoman: Kate Kane and Julia Pennyworth operate out of the Sequoia, a large motoryacht that houses all of Kate's gear and vehicles, in Batwoman (Rebirth).
- Black Moon Chronicles: The flag ship of the Tharque Empire, a maritime nation that once ruled the world, is made out of the skeleton of a dead sea monster. It utterly dwarfs the other ships, and is even powered by magic so that it can row itself.
- Iron Man Noir: The comic features Stark Industries' Happy Hogan, a very small submersible with just enough room for four people (plus enough headroom to stand), and Captain Namor's Lady Dorma, a sub easily twice the Hogan's size and with a lot more power.
- As a side note, the ships' names are Mythology Gag: in mainstream Marvel continuity, these are people's names -– Happy Hogan is one of Iron Man's best friends, and Lady Dorma was Namor's wife.
- Jommeke: Kapitein Jan Haring's steam boat De Plank.
- Marauders: Mutantkind is flush with cash, so their sea-based team has a pair. Captain Kate Pryde has the Marauder, a high-tech luxury liner commissioned by the Hellfire Club and it's armed with a Phalanx CIWS and a couple of main cannons. Emma Frost, the Marauder's financial benefactor, also got her brother Christian to aid the team. Christian's ship, Mercury, is a submarine whose interface is sometimes a piano and it also doubles as a spaceship.
- Nero: Kapitein Oliepul's boat His Majesty's Pull is a small steam boat with a huge chimney, nevertheless capable of turning up in any ocean all over the world to save the main cast.
- Rasmus Klump: Rasmus' steam boat, Mary, named after his mother.
- Swordquest: A literal one appears in Swordquest: Waterworld — the Ice Queen, a pirate ship made entirely out of ice.
- Tintin: The escape submarine concealed in a "sinking" motorboat that the villain uses in the book The Red Sea Sharks.
- The Firefly in Son of the Western Sea, a Baltimore clipper
Percy resurrected from the bottom of the ocean and restored. Fully modernised and redesigned with electricity, plumbing, rollout solar panels, internet, entertainment system and kitchen. It is also armed with eight twelve-pound cannons modified by Leo Valdez to automatically reload and use Greek Fire projectiles. Percy can control everything on the ship with his mind, including the cannons. And that is before including the various magical additions gathered through his journey.
- The Beast Wars fic "Underwater Beast Wars
" features the Maximals and Predacons each making their own small ship to travel underwater and mine the energon deposits they have recently detected. While Tarantulas makes a ship in the form of a spider, Rhinox's design is based on human boats and can transform into a killer whale, which the Maximals name "Orchanoch", crewed by the new aquatic Maximals Cybershark, Armordillo and Claw Jaw.
- The Steampunk submarine Ulysses from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, its subpod fighter craft, and its evacuation craft are all pretty dang cool.
- Cars 2:
- Tony Trihull, who is a large shark-faced battleship used as the Lemons' main form of transportation.
- Crabby, Finn McMissile's fishing boat seen in the film's prologue.
- In Incredibles 2, Winston Deavor owns The Everjust, the world's largest hydrofoil. It even has a private jet on it.
- Kung Fu Panda 2 has Shen's cannon ship seen in the climax.
- The Yellow Submarine (which can also fly, time travel, launch giant cigars and survive being sucked into oblivion to name a few).
- 2012. The arkships.
- The Nautilus from Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a Steampunk dream brought to life.
- Not as big as the above examples, but in Disney's Condorman, the CIA builds the titular hero a speedboat with a laser cannon built into a turret mount on the back. It features prominently in the climactic chase scene. He also gets a Cool Car earlier in the movie.
- The U-96 in Das Boot, being also able to return to base after the ordeal she as well as her crew suffered just to being sunk in a bombing raid there.
- Dead Calm has the Ingrams' yacht Saracen, a 74 foot ketch (portrayed by the Stormvogel).
- The USS Nimitz from The Final Countdown; first of the US Navy's Nimitz-class supercarriers, and the most powerful warship in the world at the time, and then she gets sent back nearly 40 years to just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, where against 40's era planes and weapons, she's packing God-like levels of power.
- The Godzilla franchise has the underwater battleship Gotengo (the name translating as "Ship of the Roaring Heavens"), one of the few vessels capable of facing the Kaiju and sometimes win:
- Atragon (original title: "Undersea Warship") has the Gotengo (renamed Atragon) in the international release) starting being built after World War II by its captain and designer Hachiro Jinguji out of exaggerated nationalistic pride. The ship was so powerful and advanced that the lost kingdom of Mu, with its immense technological superiority, demands the rest of the world stops the construction or the surface civilization will be destroyed. And once the Mu attack and Jinguji can be finally convinced to fight for the whole world rather than the glory of the lost militaristic Japan, the ship attacks directly Mu-and proceeds to kill its guardian kaiju Manda (a gigantic dragon) before taking out the whole kingdom.
- Godzilla: Final Wars opens with the Gotengo defeating and sealing into ice Godzilla itself, though she was almost destroyed in the battle. Years later the upgraded Gotengo gets damaged defeating Manda, and so is the only one of the Earth Defence Force to escape when the Xillians take control of most kaiju and use them for their invasion of Earth, and the captain, being the kind of madman Earth needed at the moment, had the bright idea of freeing Godzilla to fight for Earth.
- James Bond:
- The Disco Volante from Thunderball. The bow part is actually a hydrofoil and can detach from the rest to go faster.
- The gadgets-filled Amazon boat from Moonraker. Some might think the "Bondola" (Bond's hovercraft gondola) also fits this.
- In The Spy Who Loved Me, there's Karl Stromberg's Liparus, and Elliot Carver's stealth boat from Tomorrow Never Dies (the latter obviously supposed to be the real-life Sea Shadow stealth technology demonstrator). Bond villains luck out with boats, apparently.
- For Your Eyes Only had the St. Georges — an ugly Maltese fishing trawler on the outside, but on the inside a sophisticated Spy Ship capable of launching Britain's nuclear arsenal.
- The speedboat conceived by Q in The World Is Not Enough.
- No Time to Die has a two-seater glider that can fold into a mini-submarine. The film also has the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon.
- Quint's fishing boat, the "Orca", in Jaws.
- The Nautilus from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
- The Zissou Team's Belafonte in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. It has a spa, a recording studio, monitoring equipment, a duo of scout dolphins, a submersible, a helicopter, an underwater observation deck, and much more.
- Cool, but everything in it now is 30 years out of date.
- Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World sees Captain Jack Aubrey making a case for why the HMS Surprise is this despite her many years in service.
The Surprise is not old. No one would call her old. She has a bluff bow, lovely lines. She's a fine sea-boat: weatherly, stiff and fast. Very fast, if she's well-handled. No, she's not old. She's in her prime.
- In The Asylum's modern adaptation of Moby-Dick, the Pequod is a nuclear submarine for the US Navy. Captain Ahab modifies its torpedoes into harpoons, and is also carrying a miniature atomic device known as "The Fadallah" for when he finally tracks down the white whale.
- Pirates of the Caribbean wouldn't be a proper tale about piracy if it didn't feature at least one cool ship—
- East Indiaman Black Pearl set the tone for the series straight away. She's been burned, sunk (twice), resurfaced, renamed, stolen (twice), cursed, went to Davy Jones' Locker and came back to tell the tale. In spite of all that, she's one of the fastest sailing ships in the world, if not the fastest. Little wonder that Jack Sparrow says that the Black Pearl represents freedom to him.
- Then there's the Flying Dutchman. She's covered in barnacles and seaweed, crewed by undying fishmen, can sail against the wind faster than any other sailing ship, and can dive and resurface as easily as a fish. She also sports a pair of tri-barreled rotary cannons on her bow—oh, and she's got the ability to literally Summon Bigger Fish.
- Queen Anne's Revenge from the fourth film. All together now, everybody: MAGIC PIRATE FLAMETHROWERS.
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has the Silent Mary, a massive ghost ship that can eat other ships whole.
- Being big budget movies about pirates, there are many more examples, but they just can't keep up with the four supernatural ships.
- Averted in PT109. The PT-boats in general are referred to as "pieces of plywood," and the 109 in particular is (informed to be) in pretty bad shape.
- In Safety Not Guaranteed, Kenneth turns a swamp boat into a time machine.
- The RMS Titanic. Full stop.
- The Mariner's boat from Waterworld was pretty cool.
- Sebastian Shaw's submarine from X-Men: First Class is pretty normal on the outside, but on the inside it's very cool looking. And we're not even going into the nuclear device he's hiding in the room full of mirrors.
- Also it gets lifted out of the water by Magneto, so that's cool.
- In The Eye of Winter's Fury, the 3rd book in Michael J. Ward's DestinyQuest series, the book is set in a Norse hellscape and your character will be riding on the Naglfar, the cursed ship made from the toenails of the dead. This version of Naglfar is no slouch in defending itself, it has an arsenal of ballistae to blast sea monsters with.
- The Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, an advanced submarine in the 19th century, has a size and underwater travel range that would not be matched in the real world until after World War II, with a speed only matched by one sub in history in real life, the Soviet Lyra/"Alfa" class (unfortunately, it wouldn't work as described by Verne, who extrapolated from several cutting-edge technologies of the time and scaled them up). On the other hand, since she attacked surface ships by ramming them, it's surprising Captain Nemo never thought of inventing the torpedo. Nautilus was a ship of such coolness that several later vessels have been named after her — including, appropriately enough, the world's first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus.
- In the Aubrey-Maturin series, the HMS Surprise, undeniably.
- A number of 21st-century ships in Axis of Time, especially since they're facing off against World War II-era technology. Most of those ships have on-board AIs capable of singlehandedly control the ship's defense systems (consisting of MetalStorm and laser pods). The key players are the USS Hillary Clinton (advanced supercarrier launching F-22 Raptors), the HMS Trident (triple-hulled stealth destroyer) that One Hit Kills the Tirpitz, and the HMAS Havoc (submarine responsible for sinking most of the Japanese fleet). Honorable mention goes to the JDS Siranui (stealth cruiser that ends up leading the US Pacific Fleet for a time) and the Dessaix (French stealth destroyer that ends up in the hands of the bad guys).
- Minerva from The Baroque Cycle was designed to be a pirate-killer, and it does a pretty good job of it. Its bottom is also lined with metal (Unobtanium at first, later replaced with ordinary copper) to prevent it from catching barnacles; not much of a big deal in modern times, but the book was set during The Cavalier Years.
- Beyond Thirty has the Coldwater; a Pan-American Navy "aero-sub" — a submarine capable of Anti-Gravity flight. It is a shame the hero is cut off from it after the first chapter.
- Vincent Dawn's yacht, The Silk Dragon from Cat Girls Have Four Ears is roomy and comfortable, has a pool and a hot-tub and rocket launchers on the roof. It is crewed by women and cat-girls.
- The Chathrand of The Chathrand Voyages is the last of the Great Ships, making it the mightiest ship in the world. These ships were made using magical Lost Technology and now-extinct trees of supernatural origin. The Great Ships are the only ships capable of surviving a voyage through a deadly zone in the sea.
- In Chronicles of Chaos, the Argent Nautilus, among its other virtues, arrives when Vanity summons it and can carry them anywhere on the earth in a day and a night. Space travel turns out to be a bit more interesting but feasible.
- Clive Cussler novels have these in abundance, seeing as how they commonly center around the water, but the prize for Coolest Boat has to go to the mercenary ship Oregon. In addition to being one of the fastest and most dangerous vessels on the planet, crewed by a seriously professional mercenary group and disguised as an aging tramp steamer, it was the only Boat that proved Cool enough for Cussler to launch a spinoff series, The Oregon Files, for the sole purpose of bringing it and its crew back after their cameo debut in the Dirk Pitt Adventures novel Flood Tide.
- Clockwork Century: The eponymous Steampunk submersible from Ganymede.
- Captain Demos' Silve from Codex Alera. It's all one giant wood fury.
- Dark Life has the Spector: a stealth sub shaped like an enormous shark!
- Also from the sequel, Rip Tide, we have Ratter's green Narwhal shaped sub which has a drill for a horn.
- The Darkness Series takes place in a high fantasy retelling of World War II. The pykrete aircraft carriers of Project Habakkuk make an appearance as giant magically-permanently-frozen icebergs, sporting plenty of kennel space for dragons (standing in for aircraft).
- Invoked in Dead Silence. The Aurora is a luxury liner-shaped spaceship, done for the purpose of enticing the extremely wealthy and create a sense of familiarity. It was loaded down with every extravagance and show of luxury: an infinity pool, theater, mall, and massive "glass" viewport across the bow.
- Deeplight: The Screaming Sea Butterfly is a transparent submarine, made from god-glass (a substance harvested from the corpses of the gods), and powered by an unholy noise produced via compressed air.
- Many of the ships in the Destroyermen series, especially as the series goes on. Just to name a few:
- USS Walker: Wickes-class destroyer, sent to a parallel world along with her sister ship USS Mahan. Turns out to be one of the most powerful ships on this world.
- USS Salissa: a former Lemurian Home (aircraft carrier-sized wooden sailing ship), converted into a steam-powered carrier. Also initially carries heavy guns, salvaged from the Japanese battlecruiser Amagi.
- USS Fitzhugh Gray: the lead ship of the first class of light cruisers in The Alliance navy. Basically, a scaled-up version of the Walker.
- IJN Amagi: a Japanese battlecruiser, which, at the time, is easily the most powerful warships in that world.
- Arata Amagi-class battleships: Grik-Japanese steam ironclads. Later converted into Akagi-class carriers by Kurokawa.
- Surcouf-type submarine: a "submarine cruiser" with twin 8" guns.
- Savoie: a Bretagne-class battleship from a parallel world, where France turned fascist.
- The Lookfar in Earthsea, though small, has probably sailed farther — certainly east, west, and south — than any other boat in Earthsea.
- The Elric Saga has several fantasy versions of these. First there are gigantic ziggurat battleships of the Melnibonean navy. These enormous battleships can bombard enemy ships with catapults that hurl alchemical fireballs, and these ziggurat ships are nearly impervious to hull damage to their thick plates of armour made from gold. Second was an artifact boat that was joint venture between the elemental lords Strassha and Grome, as such the boat can sail on land as well as sea (though later the Earth lord Grome, in a hissy fit, revoked the power to sail on land) and finally there are colossal ships of the Chaos Navy. These magical ships are titans that dwarf the Melnibonean golden ships in size and herald the end of the world.
- The Naglfar from Michael J. Ward's The Eye of Winter's Fury (Book 3 of Destiny Quest, a Fighting Fantasy-type series) is a ship based on the Naglfar of Norse mythology and is also crewed by ghost sailors and formed from the hair and nails of the dead. This one is also capable of defending itself with otherworldly versions of ballistae.
- Fevre Dream has the eponymous steamboat Fevre Dream, the biggest, fastest and most luxurious steamboat on the Mississippi River. Her captain dreams of racing her against the reigning champion, Eclipse, but there's a distracting problem with a vampire infestation to deal with first.
- Fridthjof's Saga: Ellidi, the ship Fridthjof inherits from his father Thorstein, goes very fast and is "the best ship in the ocean" and "the best [ship] that has ever been in the Northlands". In part thanks to Ellidi's excellence Fridthjof and his companions survive the magical storm on their voyage to Orkney.
- The Prince Alfra is the titular "The Iron Ship" in the first book of K.M. Mckinley's The Gates of the World trilogy. Prince Alfra is the world's first oceanic iron ship in a world dominated by ships made of pumice-like floatstone. On a world where the seas are haunted by the undead and other beings, the iron hull makes the Alfra impervious to supernatural attack. The Alfra is powered by a unique design of glimmer engines, normally iron and the magical glimmer are anathema to each other, but experimental alchemical treatments enable the combination. These glimmer engines and a prototype paddle wheel/screw propeller propulsion system give the Prince Alfra unequaled speed and strength.
- In The Heroes of Olympus, Percy blatantly calls the Argo II the most incredible ship he's ever seen. Averted by the beat-up dinghy that constitutes the entire Roman navy.
Hazel: I didn't even know we had a navy.
- Humanx Commonwealth: The Slanderscree from the Icerigger trilogy is a vast technological improvement upon the Tran natives' usual rafts, sporting clipper-style masts and sails, a needle-slim racing hull, and skids made of unbreakable Commonwealth duralloy. Skids, because it's an iceship and speeds over Tran-ky-ky's frozen oceans so fast that it needs inverted side-mounted airfoils just to avoid lifting off.
- The Red October from The Hunt for Red October: a modified "Typhoon" class submarine with an (almost) silent drive system and 26 nuclear missiles as compared to the 20 that the other Typhoons of Real Life had. Consider that each of those missiles could carry ten warheads (eight in the novel). Especially in the film, where The Reveal of the sub becomes a Moment of Awesome, complete with Ominous Russian Chanting.
- The gilded submarine Leif Erikson in the Illuminatus! trilogy, that functions as the headquarters for the Legion of Dynamic Discord.
- The Dragon Wing of the Inheritance Cycle, finest sailing ship in the Empire, designed by master shipwright Kennel... and not available to anyone who can't pay a roomful of gold. The Palancar Pirates find a way around that, though.
- In Search of the Castaways: Lord Glenarvan's yacht, Duncan, a hybrid sail-steamship which can outrun nearly any other ship.
- The Iron Ship by K.M McKinley has the titular iron ship. In a world with an ocean haunted by the undead and monsters, sailing long distances isn't feasible because almost all ships are made with a pumice-like stone that offers little protection. Enter the prototype ship, made with a hull of treated iron, the metal is an anathema to the touch for the undead and strong enough to withstand sea monster tentacles and ramming attacks. The ship also has unique method of propulsion. It uses an engine that mixes metal pellets with a magical fluid to create an enormous but controlled explosive reaction. This gives the ship unparalleled speed and range.
- The Mabuse in The Jennifer Morgue, converted into a private yacht from an ex-Soviet Krivak III
class missile frigate, by Bill Gates-ian multi-billionaire villain Ellis Billington.
- Kydd:
- The frigate Artemis, based off the real-life Nymphe
, and the first ship Kydd "had really loved".
- Kydd's first command, the brig-sloop Teazer.
- Later, in Victory, he gets another one befitting a post-captain, this time the frigate, L'Aurore.
- The frigate Artemis, based off the real-life Nymphe
- The Machinist, a retro-future techno-mage in the League of Magi series has a submarine that qualifies.
- The Little Grey Men Series: The gnomes have two cool boats: the Dragonfly which they built themselves, and the clockwork paddle steamer Jeanie Deans.
- Master of the World features the Terror, a streamlined, super-fast motorboat camouflaged so as to be almost invisible on the waves. Press a button and it becomes a submarine.
- Moby-Dick: The Pequod is functionally a normal whaling ship, but Melville makes it bizarre-looking purely for Rule of Cool — more than half a century old, archaic, worn and weathered, and covered in whale bones. Ishmael is so fascinated with it that he decides right away it's the one he and Queequeg are destined to sail on.
- The Reader (2016) has the Current of Faith, the ship of Captain Reed and his crew. The coolness comes not from the ship but from the chief mate, since he can speak to the trees that were used to make the ship's hull and thus knows everything that happens on board.
- The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal: Stigandi, the ship King Harald selects for Ingimund as a parting gift, is, although not large, very fast and "the best ship of all upwind under sail and better voyaging than any of the others."
- Sandokan:
- Many (after all, the series is mostly set at sea), but the ships of the Tigers of Mompracem in general and Sandokan and Yanez' personal ships in the third, fourth and fifth novels (the Marianna in The Pirates of Malaysia and the two Pearl of Labuan in The Two Tigers and The King of the Sea) take the cake, being the fusion of the traditional Malaysian proas (spelled praho in the series) with European shipbuilding techniques to obtain ships far faster, better armed and tougher than any sailing vessel of similar size.
- The King of the Sea from the novel of the same name: an ironclad warship originally named Nebraska and built in Oregon for the Sultan of Shemmeridan, it's literally the mightiest ship of the whole world, with thicker armor, larger main guns (four of them in two turrets) and greater speed than anything anyone else had built to that point. As soon as he learns that the new Sultan of Shemmeridan refused to buy it (and left the builders the money paid in advance), Yanez bought it for twice the requested price—and found out the ship was so invincible he had still bought it cheap.
- The Cerys in Septimus Heap, sporting among others ventilated safe rooms, lots of fancy equipment etc.
- Several from A Series of Unfortunate Events, including The Carmelita, the Queequeg, and the Great Unknown (although just what that is is left open).
- The Yabba Dabba Doo, the eco-terrorist Dufresne's vessel from Sewer, Gas & Electric, is the only submarine in history to boast an on-board arboretum that's also the escape-capsule, a polka-dot paint job, and hamster tubing threaded through its interior alongside the wires and pipes.
- The titular ship of The Ship That Sailed to Mars. Constructed by an amateur astronomer and a cadre of fairy craftsman, the ship is decked out with ropes made from gemstones and a golden figurehead in the shape of a phoenix. It can also fly through space.
- At the end of The Silmarillion, the Valar turned Eärendil's ship Vingilótë into a flying ship, so he could sail around in the outer atmosphere, or outer space (it's not clear which). With the last Silmaril tied to his head, he became the Evening Star and Morning Star (a.k.a. Venus).
- Not content with just one cool boat, Snow Crash has The Raft — a massive flotilla of refugee ships all attached to the Enterprise (the aircraft carrier, not the starship). The Enterprise, now a private yacht, follows the currents around the Pacific Ocean, picking up refugees in Asia and dropping them off in the former United States.
- Somewhither: Not seen, but mentioned is Captain Dakkar's ironclad submarine, an experimental ship stolen from the Dark Tower's shipyards, equipped with a prodigious number of super-weapons and magic.
- Tall Tale America has Stormalong's prize ship, the Albatross.
The six masts were so tall that one man with good eyesight couldn't see to the top of any of them: it took five. These tops of masts had to be hinged, so they could be bent down to let the moon and the sun go by. The whole kit and caboodle of the Boston sailmakers had to be shipped to the Sahara Desert, so they'd have room to sew the sails.
- Subverted in The Terror: while the Erebus is regarded as supremely luxurious/high-tech/cool by the expedition's leaders, and had an IRL history of coolness-worthy achievements, Sir John Franklin's stubborn refusal to abandon his ever-so-cool flagship when it gets stuck in the ice is ultimately to blame for the uncool deaths of nearly 130 officers and crew.
- In The Tide Child Trilogy, from RJ Barker, all bone ships (including the titular Tide Child) are cool seeing as they're made from the skeleton of an arakeesian (sea dragon). But when Lucky Meas Gilbryn, the greatest "Shipwife" of the 100 Islands is introduced, the protagonist Joron Twiner especially notes that her previous command was the Arakeesian Dread. This was one of the last ships from a sea dragon old enough to develop 5 ribs. The Dread had a skull prow/metal-encased battering ram longer than an average ship and a crown of floating corpselights (imprisoned souls). For firepower it had 20 gallowbows (ballista) and banks of crossbows below deck, as well as a crew of 400 to row and keep the Dread a brilliant white.
- The Dawn Treader from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which Caspian sailed to the Uttermost East, and back.
- HMS Thunder Child from The War of the Worlds (1898), a torpedo ram that takes out three tripods while protecting refugees from London.
- In John Birmingham's Without Warning, a lot of the action takes place on the abandoned and recovered by the protagonists superyacht Aussie Rules.
- In the Child Ballad Young Beichan, the heroine may use a magical boat to reach the hero in time to stop his wedding.
- The setting for virtually all the action in Alta Mar is the Barbara de Braganza luxury cruise ship.
- Bering Sea Gold: The Cristine Rose and later the AU (Gold) Grabber are medium sized barge mounted bucket dredges and qualify much more than the smaller suction dredges.
- Black Sails has Captain Flint's Walrus, Captain Vance's Ranger, and the unnamed Spanish Man o' War, which has nearly 100 cannons.
- Game of Thrones: The Greyjoys are known for their badass fleet in addition to their prowess in maritime combat. Most badass of them all has to be Euron's dreaded monster of a flagship, the Silence
◊.
- Horatio Hornblower:
- HMS Indefatigable. About once an episode in the first series, "Indy" appears unexpectedly over the horizon to save the day, to shouts of "It's the bloody Indy!" She is never boarded and never seriously damaged. Her sailors love her to bits. What a ship! Cool boat indeed. She even has her Leitmotif.
- HMS Renown in the second series. A ship of the line with gazillion of guns. Less cool than the "Indy", but she's still a very decent ship. She has an oppressing, suffocating atmosphere at first, being captain by a tyrannical captain, but it's clear that her sailors love her and are proud to be serving aboard her.
- HMS Hotspur, only a mere sloop, but still a fine ship. She's Captain Hornblower's second command. Would you expect this ship anything less than stellar? You'd be wrong.
- JAG has several episodes taking place on submarines.
- The Space Pirate-themed Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger has one in the form of the Gokai Galleon, the Red Ranger's personal mecha and the team's headquarters. It also forms the chest and head when they combine into Gokaioh. Also worth mentioning are Gokai Pink cool sub (the Gokai Marine) and Gokai Silver's cool time jet (GoZyu Drill).
- The Pacific Princess from The Love Boat.
- You can bet there wasn't a kid alive in the 80's who didn't want Sonny Crockett's Endeavour 42 sailboat (complete with alligator) and Chris Craft Stinger 390 speedboat in Miami Vice.
- The producer absolutely made the Stinger look like sex on the water. "Oh, she can handle about 200 keys (of dope) and still outrun anything the Coast Guard's got." Badass Boat might've been the better description.
- With the Mythbusters being who they are, you just know they've got a cool boat or two in their workshop—
- In the interest of finding out whether Project Habakkuk of World War II could have worked, Adam and Jamie built the Yesterday's News — a motorboat made out of frozen newspapers (similar to the wood pulp and ice that Project Habakkuk's carriers would have used, but stronger). Yesterday's News was seaworthy for all of ten minutes before the hull started to thaw. Can you get much cooler than a frozen boat?
- In their Duct Tape Island special, the duo built Stuck On You — an outrigger canoe made of duct tape. Stuck On You performed even better than Yesterday's News, holding together for seven hours despite open ocean and swells near the shore.
- The Jolly Roger from Once Upon a Time. Made out of enchanted wood, this ship is "the fastest vessel in all the realms". Captain Hook was even able to outrun the Dark Curse cast by Snow in season 3. Now that's fast!
- The eponymous submarine
◊, hull number DSV-4600, from SeaQuest DSV. A Cool Boat in her own right, she carried a multitude of smaller cool submersibles aboard—among them the Sea Crab workhorse vehicles, Sea Launch Shuttles, and a one-man fighter sub known as the Stinger.
- Thunderbird 4, from Thunderbirds. Also a yellow submarine, also can do anything underwater. Torpedoes, lasers, the works.
- Thunder from Thunder in Paradise. Minigun turret, missile launcher, Turbo Boost, and a pretty extensive electronic intelligence rig.
- Top Gear has featured and/or built a few. The fancy high-grade speedboat used for the Riviera race would qualify, if it hadn't beaten the shit out of James May, and it hadn't had a carbon fibre toilet (and thus the nickname HMS Carbon Khazi).
- UFO (1970): Skydiver, an atomic submarine with hydrofoil capability and a jet interceptor for a nose.
- The "S.S.R.N. Seaview" sub from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
- The Flying Submarine from the same series managed to be a Cool Boat and a Cool Plane at the same time.
- John Denver's Calypso is a romantic ode to Jacques Cousteau's oceanography vessel, its crew, and its mission to learn about and protect the world's oceans.
- The Lonely Island's "I'm On A Boat" is an ode to how cool The Boat is.
- The Irish folk song "The Irish Rover", which, funnily enough, is about a somewhat improbable ship called the Irish Rover. Subverted, as it sinks in the end.
'Twas a wonderful craft, she was rigged fore-and-aft,
And oh, how the wild winds drove her.
She'd got several blasts, she'd twenty-seven masts,And we called her the Irish Rover. - Sabaton: The single Bismarck, the video for which was sponsored by World of Warships, tells the story of the maiden (and final) voyage of the eponymous World War II German battleship, boasting that henote was a steel beast made to rule the seven seas.
- Also about the Bismarck, Johnny Horton's "Sink the Bismarck
", considered legendary and rightly so.
- Skidbladnir of Norse Mythology: it belongs to the god Freyr, can fly, and can fold up to fit in a pocket. But what do you expect from the Vikings? And for those more partial to the "gristly and nightmarish" flavor of "cool", we have the Naglfar, constructed from stem to stern of the finger and toenails of the dead.
- For the Ancient Egyptians one of the ways of depicting the sun god was to show him sailing through the sky in a boat. At night, he sailed through either the underworld, the inside of the sky goddess Nut, or the waterway behind the sky. The daytime sky could also be considered a waterway.
- No list of cool mythological boats is complete without the Argo, famous for carrying many of the greatest heroes of Greek Mythology on their voyage to Colchis to obtain the Golden Fleece. Its prow was made from a tree from the sacred grove at Dondona, which gave said prow the ability to speak prophecies.
- Lennuk, the ship of Kalevipoeg, made out of silver.
- Noah's ark as found in Rabbinic literature, The Bible, and The Qur'an. In the Quran, the ark is said to have been made of teak, and Noah could invoke Allah's name to control the ship's movements. Noah and his ark also appear in Bahá'í scripture, but there the ark is regarded as a symbol of faith rather than as a literal ship.
- The Barque of St. Peter, aboard which Jesus and his Apostles sailed. The ship went on to become an early symbol of Christianity: tossed about in an ocean of persecution, disbelief, and the harshness of the mortal world, yet still managing to deliver the souls on board to a safe harbor. Even today, "the Barque of St. Peter" is sometimes used as slang for the Catholic church or the Pope himself (who is more often said to be driving the Barque) in analogy to Plato's "ship of state."
- The Sopranos has The Stugots, Tony Soprano's yacht.
- The Lauren Belle from Maverick The Movie, where the Annual All Rivers Draw Poker Championship takes place.
- Spy Hunter features a white speedboat among Agent GK's stable.
- TV Tropes Roll To Dodge: The Jetbus becomes seaworthy seaworthy after upgrading.
- Biohazard Games/Fantasy Flight Games's Blue Planet is set on an ocean planet, so Cool Boat is a given. Set in the future, biotechnology is advanced enough that much of the construction uses versatile bio-plastics to make the various drones, submarines and hydrofoils of the world. Oddly the game doesn't focus too much on the military vessels, stats are only given for the Fighter Sub (aerodynamic fast submarines shaped like sleek fighter jets to go and torpedo surface ships and other subs). To make a military hydrofoil, you need to buy various upgrades on a base hydrofoil.
- Car Wars released the expansion Boat Wars later in its original run, which allows the play to create a customized Weaponized Boat of his choice in any size, from single-seater jet-skis to mammoth hovercraft.
- 5th ed. Dungeons & Dragons mentions one for the Forgotten Realms in the supplement Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. In the entry for the city of Yartar, the scribe mentioned that more impressive than their Shields of Yartar cavalry or their fortress, the Shield Tower (which is protected by skeleton warriors emerging out of the ground), is the ship, the Waterbaron's Barge. It's a massive vessel capable of carrying 200 infantry or 75 cavalary and it's well-armoured with iron plate. On the deck are multiple, rapid-fire Automatic Crossbow type weapons that shoot a dozen rounds per attack. The Waterbaron's Barge method for dealing with raiders to Yartar is to hit them with 2 volleys before banking ashore and releasing the warriors to charge them. The scribe mentoned that no enemy force remained unbroken when hit with that attack.
- 5th ed. supplement Ghosts of Saltmarsh gives rules on how to create your own Cool Boat. The rules for Superior Ship Upgrades has a listing of magical or mundane devices to greatly improve a boat whether it's a reinforced hull or a figurehead that's actually an Iron Golem. The listings for upgrades are Hull, Movement, Weapon, Figurehead and Miscellaneous. You can only have one upgrade from under each category with the exceptions of Miscellaneous (you can take everything in the list) and Weapon (you can get 2 upgrades if one upgrade is Arcane Artillery). Every ship, whether a humble rowboat or a powerful warship, can be made cool with even just one of these upgrades.
- One recurring magical item from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons onwards is the Appartus of Kwalish which looks like a very large barrel but activate a latch and it turns into a lobster-like vehicle that can walk on land, float on water and dive underwater up to 900 feet (beyond that and the apparatus takes damage). It can even use its claws to attack for more damage than a greatsword.
- Dystopian Wars makes an entire setting of this, with alt-history nations all having their own steam-punk fleets. Highlights include battleship versions of the White House and the Hagia Sophia, Chinese destroyers with huge dragon-shaped weapons, and Prussian ships carrying massive railway cannons.
- Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok features the Naglfar, ship of the Apocalypse, 5 miles long and entirely made of the toenails of the dead, destined to sail against the viking gods during Ragnarok.
- Games Workshop games:
- In Warhammer, the cursed Chaos Champion Wulfrik the Wanderer captains a the longship Seafang that, after a journey sailing upon the Winds of Magic through the Realm of Chaos, is capable of flying through the sky so that no enemy can escape its crew.
- All the vessels from the Gaiden Game Dreadfleet are exceptional ships. The ships of the Grand Alliance include a floating temple, a steam-powered seagoing forge, a giant pleasure barge fitted with an array of bound elementals, a pirate ship coated with bits of powerful sea creatures, and an Elven dragon roost with sails. The undead Dreadfleet itself meanwhile consists of a floating castle, a literal ghost ship, a laser-firing pyramid with a hull, a mechanical squid submarine, and a zombie deep sea monster crewed by undead rat men mad scientists.
- With a humanity living underwater in a future Earth, there's plenty of cool subs in Polaris by Phillippe Tessier (English edition through Blackbook Editions). Perhaps the biggest standout is the Fighter-class sub, the Trident which is a slow submarine but carries a large assortment of devastating energy weapons and torpedo tubes. It can also take a lot of hits with its nanotech created hypertitanium armour and operate for a decade on its thorium reactor.
- The Red October of Tom Clancy's techno-thriller novel makes an appearance in Larry Bond's Harpoon 4. In fact, in order to write the story, Clancy first gamed out the scenario in Harpoon 4 — something he also did with some of his other works.
- In Rocket Age Martians use sailing ships on the Silt Seas, which glide across the surface on giant airbags.
- Victory in the Pacific includes all the cool ships of the World War II Pacific Theater — Akagi, Yamato, Enterprise, Missouri, Victorious, etc.
- The "Welcome" scene of "it's a small world" at Disneyland shows a variety of unique-looking boats sailing in from all around the world, most of them matching the style of their respective countries.
- Adjacent to Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges at Universal's Islands of Adventure is "The Olive" ship, Popeye's own personal huge boat that can be fully explored and contains several interactive elements.
- Ace Combat:
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War has the Scinfaxi and Hrimfaxi submarines, which are also aircraft carriers somehow.
- Well, there really have been submarines that carried planes on board. The Japanese had about 50 during WWII, and one of their sub-launched planes even managed to bomb the continental US. Nowadays, you'd probably launch UAVs.
- The Scinfaxi and Hrimfaxi do launch aircraft, but only small combat-equipped UAVs for air defense during the times when they must surface. Probably a simpler solution than having to mount deck guns for the same purpose.
- Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation has the Marigold. a Kirov-class Battlecruiser that is the pride of the Emmerian Navy and one of the reoccurring allied units of the campaign. Her classification as a Battlecruiser is well deserved, as the Marigold hosts an extremely powerful arsenal that can take out most enemy units instantly and she's durable enough to survive multiple battles with various amounts of damage and still come back strong.
- Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown features the Alicorn-class in the DLC mission trilogy, which serves as a successor to the Scinfaxi-class faced in The Unsung War. Unlike its predecessors, it is a full-blown submersible aircraft carrier. It's also equipped with a nuclear rail cannon, armed to the teeth with attack and forcefield drones, and has plenty of conventional anti-air cannons, CIWS and surface-to-air missile launchers for good measure.
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War has the Scinfaxi and Hrimfaxi submarines, which are also aircraft carriers somehow.
- Act of War Expansion Pack, High Treason, allows you to build modern warships like the experimental IX-529 Sea Shadow
and the DD(X) Class Destroyer
along with more classical DDG-51 Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer
.
- During the Chinese campaign in Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties you have a giant treasure ship instead of a home city.
- ANNO: Mutationem: Proteus, an inscrutable explorer and resident of Harbor Town owns a personal boat with adjustable commendations and a well-built design to travel the sea. The Factio Pugni also owns a large freighter ship called The Walter Raleigh containing offensive weaponry and a custom-made battle mech.
- Assassin's Creed:
- Assassin's Creed III gives us the Aquila which was scuttled offscreen in story, but once you get it and upgrade it, it becomes a ship able to stand up against even the mightiest British fleets.
- Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag also gives us the Jackdaw, like the Aquila, a ship that can become a worthy floating fortress able to take on even the toughest Man O' Wars!
- For reference, the Jackdaw started out as a Spanish brig that was part of a fleet sent by the Templars to England with a number of prisoners, among them Edward Kenway and Adéwalé.
- Assassin's Creed Rogue gives us the Morrigan, a ship owned by the Templar protagonist Shay Cormac, complete with Red and Black and Evil All Over.
- In Barotrauma You are the owner of one of several types of subs capable of surviving in the hostile undersea environment of Jupiter's moon Europa. Each sub has at least some kind of defense against the native life or alien machinery — electrical discharge coils, depth charge tubes, coilguns for small, numerous foes and railguns for the truly monstrous. The mightiest of the subs are the Kastrull and Typhon 2 which are the heavy gunships of the submarine world. For civilian purposes, the kings of commerce are the Berilia and Remora.
- Battlefield 1 features Dreadnought-type battleships on certain maps, the big guns of which players are able to control.
- Command & Conquer:
- While Red Alert got most of the attention for ships, the Tiberian series has a few notable ones, namely the Massive Nod Cruisers in Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars which have considerable range with their missiles (and looking like a giant end of a scorpion's tail) and the Nod Hovercrafts, which look like giant flying manta rays.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 introduced several awesome ships with its new focus on more naval combat, with veterans (the Allied Aircraft Carrier and the Soviet Dreadnoughts), as well as the new Assault Destroyer, a huge gunship with tank treads, and most of the Empire of the Rising Sun's navy counts.
- Dennis from Double Homework has a yacht owned by his father, where he hosts a party that is ostensibly for the protagonist.
- Fortress Destroyer from Ninja Kiwi has your rebel forces building a fleet of one of three ship classes (Corvette, Destroyer and Battlecruiser) . These ships can be built with various hulls, bridges and modules as well as carry multiple weapon towers from a huge listing of kinetic and energy weapons in a Flooded Future World.
- Ghost Trick: Well, more like "Cool Submarine": The Yonoa has an interior which one can see from far away, especially in the HD remaster. Besides the Control Room (with portraits of Commander Sith) and the Torpedo Room, the sub also has (from left) an engine room, a mess hall, and a crew cabin. And above the mess hall is a luxurious Captain's Cabin with a fancy bed, a telephone, and a mechanical device that picks out grapes, which is probably Commander Sith's way of sleeping at night. It's no wonder the sub is so luxurious.
- Golden Sun: The Lost Age: The Lemurian ship. For one thing, it can only be moved using Psynergy. Later, it gains wings, which allow it to hover above the water (or land) using said Psyenergy. Later still, a cannon is installed.
- Grim Fandango: The SS Lola starts out as a rusty tramp steamer and, a year later and under new management, has been converted into the biggest floating hotrod ever.
- Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.: Villainous example: the Myrmidon, flagship of Artemis Global Security. Armed with super-advanced cruise missiles that outrange a US Navy carrier group, powerful anti-air batteries, and can absorb as much damage as its attendant escort fleet combined.
- Hero of the Kingdom II: The player character has to gather resources and personnel to construct one of these in order to chase down the pirates who kidnapped his little sister.
- Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising has the Antaeus, the prototype for the so-called "adaptive cruisers". Interesting in that, at the start of the game, it's 20 years old, and one of only two survivors of its class (the Antaeus was number 00, and the other was number 04, but 04 fails to respond to the surface order given before the game begins). The primary feature of the class is the ability to build combat forces on the spot using nanomachines. At the end of the game, the Antaeus is turned into a makeshift nuke and sent on a kamikaze mission to stop a hostile race from escaping Earth. It's assumed nobody onboard (read: the captain, aka you, and the various brain profiles that make up your combat forces) survived. Your enemies, however, not only make it into space anyway, they also take over the creation engine of your ship. Downer Ending, indeed.
- Hydro Thunder has a hi-speed jet boat race across all kinds of exotic locations including other planets and dimensions, where you pilot prototype racers including one built from alien technology.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The King of Red Lions is a cool-looking boat who doubles as your Exposition Fairy.
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass where you get to customize Linebeck's/your very own Cool Boat.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The little motorboat has a Timeshift Stone inside of it that allows it to create a large field around it that causes the surrounding area to be the sea that it was in the past.
- Metal Gear:
- Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: Arsenal Gear, it lacked every single advantage of a Metal Gear, in alphabetical order. There's also the fact it was essentially a mobile staging platform for mass-production model Metal Gear RAYs, having a hangar for at least a dozen of them which would be controlled from safely inside Arsenal, making it quite a formidable and valuable naval asset.
- Also, its improved version, Outer Haven from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots where it holds an entire army.
- Monster Hunter 4 has the Arluq, a pink whale-shaped ship that carries the Capital C Caravan. It boasts a huge drill on the front for inflicting massive damage to dragon-type monsters known as a Dragonator, as well as multiple ballista units and cannons, in the event of a monster attack in mid-voyage. Which does happen when the Caravan tries to leave Harth, courtesy of the Gore Magala. Later, a blimp attachment allows the Arluq to fly, turning it into a Global Airship and letting it reach the high-elevation mountain village of Cathar.
- The point of the Naval Ops series.
- You start your way with a destroyer hull and some really puny weapons, and through a lot of fighting and research and designing, hopefully end up with a Cool Ship tailored to your liking. Possibilities for high end Cool Ships include an ultra-high-speed missile frigate with enough gizmos to make Bond jealous, an old-fashioned battleship but with gravity and EMP shielding and a good enough loading system to blot out the sun with artillery fire, a battleship with a drill mounted on the hull, a battleship with a Wave-Motion Gun, a submarine that looks like a torpedo-firing shark, and a aircraft carrier with a full wing of whatever kind of planes you want to kill things with.
- In addition, the bosses of that series mostly come in the form of superships. In the early game they tend to just be versions of usually pretty normal ship types except for the fact that they're a hundred or so times bigger than they should be. Whether that makes them cool ships itself is not certain, but the superships that appear later usually get stranger (and cooler). Cool superships include a giant drillship, twin-hulled battleships, an iceberg aircraft carrier, and invisible battleships.
- The iconic Druna Skass (or Wolkenkratzer in the Japanese version) deserves a special mention. This recurring boss since the earliest installment of the series (a sprite-based PC game) is armed to the teeth and sports ultra-heavy armor which renders cannons smaller than 60cm harmless. The ship and its variations are the only canon superweapons to sport a literal Wave-Motion Gun in the series to this date, which was used to blast the Shikoku Island into two halves just to make a grand entry for itself in Warship Gunner 2.
- Pirates of the Caribbean Online:
- The player's own ship can become this, with enough materials and upgrades. Sufficient investment can result in your ship being able to tank broadside after broadside while being able to retaliate with cannonballs made of explosive material or even just by flat-out shooting lightning at the enemy.
- The Goliath is the Final Boss of the main story quest. It's a Ship-of-the-Line with eighteen broadside cannons, with the ability to fire Firebrand cannonballs, and after the grueling gauntlet against the bridges, it will be ready to stop the player from escaping with the Black Pearl.
- Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 has the Plasma Frigate, which doubles as a Cool Airship. This is also a terrible pun, as it has incredible freezing powers.
- Chosokabe Motochika, the resident Pirate from Sengoku Basara has a nice boat. Sure it's made of wood, but that doesn't make it any less Badass.
- The Shantae series: Risky uses Living Ships to attack Shantae, and those are always cool:
- Shantae: Risky's Revenge: The Steam-Powered Oceanic Tinker Tub has Sphere Eyes and a mouth.
- Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The Part Omni-Organic, Partially Titanic, Ocean-Optional Tinkerslug.
- Sonic Rush Adventure has four different boats to explore the ocean with; a stunt jetski, a heavily-armed sailboat, a speedy hovercraft with a charge beam, and a submarine. Each has a sort of minigame to control.
- The Interceptor, the Spy Hunter series' Cool Car, turns into a Cool Boat when you drive it into water. Comes complete with assorted James Bond goodies to use on the bad guys chasing you.
- The Seamoth and the Cyclops from Subnautica are another case of Cool Submarines. The Seamoth is a one-person submersible which can survive depths of up to 200m (or 900m when fully upgraded) and has a hugely customisable design, capable of taking a range of options from enhanced sonar to defensive capabilities. The Cyclops is a much larger design which can take depths of up to 500m (or 1700m when fully upgraded), is large enough to survive an assault from a Reaper Leviathan, has a dry-dock for the Seamoth, an onboard AI for navigation and collision detection, and five lockers worth of storage plus suitable free room for, say, a workshop, a cabin, or even a small garden, making it effectively a mobile underwater base.
- Irem's PS2 game Sub Rebellion has you piloting the advanced submarine Chronos for the Allied Forces. The Chronos has a powerful sonar system that acts almost like an X-ray machine to scan through underwater land formations to look for enemies and hidden treasure. For underwater combat, the Chronos has torpedoes and needle guns, but when it surfaces it makes use of machine guns and missiles. Finally it can integrate ancient Atlantean artifacts for use (including the Medusa Head Laser).
- Origin's PC game Subwars 2050 has many of theatres of war happen in the sea using mercenaries that pilot next-generation combat submarines that are shaped like fighter jets to enhance their mobility under water.
- Since Suikoden IV is set in the Island Nations, it was only natural to have a Cool Boat for your headquarters. The ship offers all of the usual amenities for a Suikoden base, from shops and a blacksmith to MiniGames, a training hall and a massive onsen.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- The airships from the series manage to roll Cool Boat, Cool Airship, and Cool Starship all into one flying pirate ship.
- The SS Tea Cup in Wario Land. Large enough to serve as a world of the game, and if maps are to be believed, something like a few hundred to a thousand feet in length and height, it's got plenty of rooms, mooks, treasure and entire rooms made of solid stone. Oddly, it's a lot smaller in the intro cut scene.
- Yoshi's Island: One of Yoshi's transformations in Yoshi's Universal Gravitation is a boat that navigates though the waters you get to tilt in some stages.
- In Super Snail from QCPlay Limited, in Britland the ability that Super Snail has is being able to purchase a naval fleet from the Age of Sail. This is one of the best abilities as the fleet will deliver an opening salvo on enemies including the Apostles there as well as allow you to explore various ocean kingdoms. Your fleet include highly fictionalized versions of real-life ships - the Caravel is a anime-style drill ship while the futuristic Royal Battleship carries a high tech BFG on its deck, as well as some more fantastical examples. Super Snail can have up to 5 vessels from among the following: Caravel, Hansa Sailboat, Yamato Warship, Galleon, Corvette, Light Cruiser, Flemish Galleon,Turtle Ship, Royal Battleship, Carrack, Fortune Ship, Venetian Gunboat, HMS Victory, Soleil Royal, St. Trinidad, Roma Ranger and the Treasure Tree. The Roma Ranger is the sole non-sailing ship and an expy of the giant mecha Gypsy Danger while the Treasure Tree is a sailed vessel with a magical tree and seven treasures to house a miniature world in its branches The Treasure Tree is unusually small, but all its artifacts and magic circles make it extremely powerful especially for its small size. Finally there's the unlockable Ghost Ship which is a combat ability available after unlocking the Doomsday Sea area and beating the Ghost Ship. The Ghost Ship sails behind Super Snail and afflicts your enemies with multiple penalties, it gains more power for how many "Wails" it collects from your fallen sailors - and you'll have thousands of those.
- Supreme Commander has several, depending on your preferred variety of boat. The UEF boasts the Atlantis submersible aircraft carrier and the Summit battleship that looks like a WW2 battleship updated with plasma weapons, the Aeon have the Tempest submersible factory battleship and the Macross Missile Massacre of the Torrent missile cruiser, and the Seraphim offering is the Hathuum battleship with onboard nuclear missile factory and launcher.
- The Cybran destroyer. Maybe not as impressively huge or powerful as the other examples, but it can crawl out of the water and walk on land, essentially turning into a six-legged Humongous Mecha, with naval-scale weaponrynote . It even came with it's own built-in anti-air capabilities.
- The first three races also have their own nuclear attack subs, capable of sitting in the ocean and building nukes to fire at enemies. The nukes were shorter ranged, but the ships also had the ability to launch cruise missiles either while waiting or to knock out enemy nuke defenses.
- The UEF cruiser also had on-board cruise missiles in addition to being largely immune to missiles itself. The Cybran Cruiser lacked the "land-legs" of the Destroyer but made up for it with it's Anti-Air, which could be converted to ground level unguided use, much like the T1 AA unit. Far more useful on the sea due to the larger size of enemy naval targets.
- Taken to whole new levels in the sequel. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No... it's a god damn flying Cybran "naval"-fleet that now sports jumpjets, can walk on land, lays a smackdown on anything it encounters, and has no real hardcounter. EVERY. CYBRAN. SHIP. Submarines? Yeah I'll walk on land. Tanks? Ok, lets go for a swim. Experimentals? Kiting all day, every day. Cybrans are all about adapting to the enemy. And with their cruisers they knocked the ball into the stratosphere.
- Test Drive Unlimited 2 features a yacht that goes for 5 to 7 mil. if you purchased it on Ibiza or Hawaii, it not only features a large elevator platform to park your current car on. It also features a ventral, six car garage to keep your most valued vehicles in.
- Total War: Shogun 2 has the Black Ships, which are, essentially, European trading ships that wouldn't be that effective against European navies of the time but are devastating against the grapple-and-board row-powered Japanese ships of the period. "The Fall of the Samurai" DLC moves the action to the 19th century with all ships being steamers. The best ships are ironclads, which can break your clan's economy if you're not careful (so can the Black Ships in the vanilla game, by the way, if you manage to capture one). To even get an ironclad, you need to make friends with one of the Western powers (UK, France, US), in which case you will be able to recruit 1 or 2 of their ironclads (Warrior, L'Océan, Roanoke). You can also build weaker Japanese ironclads of the Kōtetsu class (even though the original Kōtetsu was French-made). A single ironclad can wipe out a fleet of wooden steamers, especially with explosive rounds that set fire to them. Due to the limitations of the engine, the developers chose to make the Roanoke a broadside-type ship instead of having it be armed with revolving turrets, as it was in Real Life.
- On the other hand, even an ironclad can be sunk by one or two torpedo strikes, which makes those torpedo boats useful if they can line up their shots correctly and can do so before being blasted by the ironclad.
- In Transformers (2004), Tidal Wave is the Cool Boat.
He's also the biggest Transformer in the game by a long shot.
- Undertow (Chair Entertainment):
- Eva's Hammer is a huge Nazi submarine in the 2010s Wolfenstein titles. After making a brief appearance in Wolfenstein: The New Order, it becomes the main characters' traveling base of operations in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. The protagonist returns to this cool boat between missions for a respite, exploration, character development, side missions, and for returning to previously explored areas for optional assassination missions.
- XenoGears: The Yggdrasil is a ship that can drive easily through sand and water, holds a station to store all Gears for maintenance, and later is able to fly across the sky.
- Ever Blue has two flying boats so far: the one Ten came to Rose City on (and Seta inadvertently destroyed), and the Skyward, built by Luna with Ten's help.
- In Thistil Mistil Kistil, Loki is unimpressed with Coal's boat. This, on the other hand...
- The Borealis in Roll to Roll to Dodge might count as this, if only because it was often powered by Derm's water magic forcing the water under it backwards at high speeds. That is, until he sunk it by trying to increase the density of the nearby water and instead turning the water to gas.
- The speed-boat from Boat Knight
counts, thanks to its hot rod flames, three Sterling outputs and the fact that it was designed, built and ridden by a knight during the Middle Ages.
- The Alternate History Decades of Darkness features battleships with 18-inch cannons. So far only a few ships in the real world have been designed to surpass that caliber, and only one class ever saw the light of day (the Yamato battleships).
- There is one drawn on the chalkboard in the background of Echo Chamber's Terrible Interviewees Montage episode.
- In The Gamer's Alliance, several cool ships have shown up, the most (in)famous of which are the Behemoth, the Eroean, the Flaming Monkey, the Hiltraud, the Law, the Lesbian Seagull and the Proletariat.
- Open Blue encourages players to make their own Cool Boat, within certain reasonable boundaries. The modification system helps add variety (some examples include Greek Fire, Harpoon cannons, and a bow-mounted, man-powered drill).
- Parodied in Something Awful's "A Most Magnificent Ship
." The ship in question is made of the most beautiful materials in the world with no regard for whether they'll withstand a moment's use. For starters, its hull is made of paper-thin porcelain.
- The Carribean Queen from Captain Fall
is a luxury cruise ship that's secretly also a mobile base for an international criminal organization capable of secretly carrying all kinds of contraband, drugs, weapons, endangered animals, nuclear weapons etc. and equiped with hidden artillery capable of taking down a fleet of attack helicopters.
- Spoofed in Family Guy with the S.S. More Powerful Than Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the Incredible Hulk Put Together.
- G.I. Joe featured the enormous U.S.S. FLAGG, which featured in the cartoon and the toys (in which it was a huge 7-foot playset).
- The Legend of Korra: Varrick has a whole fleet of cool ships and speedboats. He even has the first Battleship, named the Zhu-Li.
- The GUPs in The Octonauts. Even the Octopod qualifies, being a mobile base.
- From The Pirates of Dark Water, The Wraith, vessel of the heroes, can detach its mainsail as a glider. Dread Pirate Bloth's ship, the Maelstrom, is as big as a modern supercarrier, and can swallow other ships whole. And is still fast enough to catch the Wraith on sail power. Bonus points for that it's apparently made with the skeleton of some sort of Behemoth.
- In She-Ra: Princess of Power, the pirate Sea Hawk has the Solar Sailor, a pirate ship that can operate in water.. and in the air, being able to fly thanks to solar-powered sails. His She-Ra and the Princesses of Power version also sails a number of cool-looking ships too - pity about his obsession with setting them on fire.
- Spoofed on The Simpsons with the Show Within a Show "Knight Boat, the Crime-Solving Boat". Which you can drive in The Simpsons Hit & Run!
- In SWAT Kats: In addition to the Cyclotron, they also another vehicle that launches like a missile from the Turbokat, but inflight, turns into a jet ski rather than a motorcycle.
- In Young Justice (2010), villain Black Manta has two cool subs. A smaller, slimmer and clean-designed one, used by a few operatives in specific missions, and a much bigger and bulkier one (enough to store the smaller one inside it with room to spare) serving as a mobile base. Given that both are manta-shaped, the smaller one looks like a juvenile offspring of the bigger one. In the second season, it becomes very symbolic, as the smaller one is usually piloted by Manta's son Kaldur/Aqualad, who took the identity of Black Manta II(Kaldur was still a good guy, but was undercover), while his father usually stayed in the bigger manta-sub.
- Zak Storm: The Chaos is a sentient ship who can defend himself and his crew on his own as well as transform into a flying mode and walking mode.