Hi all! Ric here with again with another Star Trek legacy video, looking into the history
of vessels both real and fictional to bear the name Bonaventure. This one’s gonna get
a little messy in Trek lore as numerous conflicting sources from apocryphal content have differing
accounts but we can get to that in a minute. So the earliest vessel I could find was the
HMS Bonaventure in 1489. However I could find no details on it aside from a blank wiki page
and my further digging was hampered by the fact a variation rigged mizzen mast of a vessel
is sometimes called the Bonaventure-mizzen. So moving on.
In 1551, the second vessel to bear the name was the HMS Edward Bonaventure. While the
Bonaventure name was in reference to its predecessor, the first name was in honour of the King at
the time, King Edward VI. He was the son of Henry VIII and died at the age of 15. The
ship too was wrecked in 1556. In 1567, there was a 47-gun galleon, named
the Elizabeth Bonaventure, again named for both the legacy and the monarch of the time,
Elizabeth I. Its captain was Sir Francis Drake and the vessel took part in the “Great expedition”
of 1585-86. Decommissioned in 1594? I think. 1621 saw a newly commissioned vessel that
lasted quite some time before being destroyed in the Battle of Leghorn in 1653.
In 1650, the HMS President was commissioned and renamed in 1660 to the HMS Bonaventure.
This vessel had an unusually long lifespan that puts even Starfleet tenures to shame.
This was in no small part due to multiple refits and overhauls. Such as in 1699 when
it received one of its most major refits. The vessel was relaunched in 1711 and soon
renamed the HMS Argyll. It lasted all the way until 1748, when it was scuttled, giving
it total service length of 98 years. Makes me think of that thought experiment about
replacing every part of a boat. In 1892, eight Astraea-class ships were commissioned,
one of which was a Bonaventure. By the time of the first word war, the ship was showing
its age, although it did survive the Great War. It served as mostly a support vessel
for submarines and was sold in 1920. 1939 saw the construction and launch of the
dido-class HMS Bonaventure Number 31. It operated between Canada and the UK, transferring wealth
but it was sunk in 1941. On a side note, many of the Dido class ships had really cool names
(in my opinion) as they were based on historical and mythical characters.
In 1942 a Cameron-class vessel was purchased by the navy and renamed Bonaventure. It was
heavily modified to become a submarine depot, which helped supply submarines, the second
Bonaventure to becomes such a support vessel. In 1948, it was sold back to mercantile work
and renamed Clan Davidson before being scrapped in 1963.
At the close of the Second World War, the HMS Powerful was launched in 1945. It was
a Majestic-class aircraft carrier and in 1952 it was altered for the Royal Canadian Army
and a couple of years later renamed the HCMS Bonaventure. It participated in the Cuban
Missile Crisis and was decommissioned in 1970 before being scrapped a year later.
Now. In Star Trek is where things get messy. Because there are several from lots of sources
that all can’t be true and it makes listing them in chorolo-… you know what, I’ll
just read the lore for each on and you’ll get the picture.
In 2051, the Alpha Centauri native, Zephram Cochrane discovered the plausibility of FTL
travel when the Icarus initiated first contact with the planet. The vessel that was designed
based on his work was the Bonaventure and had a maximum warp speed of 2.5.
Ten years later, in 2061, The Earth-native Zephram Cochrane created the prototype C1-21
Bonaventure, the first human vessel to break the warp 1 barrier. Outside of the lore, this
ship’s design is actually what the NX Phoenix was based on and you can see the similarities
with shape an inclusion of small nacelles. This vessel successfully broke the warp 1
barrier an ushered in the new interstellar age of exploration for mankind.
Four years later, the UNSS Bonaventure 10281NCC was launched and made three long deep space
missions, the last of which was in 2079. En route to Sirius, it became caught in a weak
point in space time and slipped into the Elysium pocket universe, where aging and energy consumption
are slowed to a crawl. When the enterprise stumbles in the same anomaly centuries later,
we overhear Scotty says it was the first vessel to have warp drive installed! On top of this,
it is covered in Starfleet livery and very similar in design to a constitution class.
As far as we can tell, it remains trapped in the pocket universe to this day, the majority
of its inhabitants are content to live in their own Elysium society with 123 other species
who are also caught in the pocket universe. In 2143, the NX alpha and beta broke that
tricky warp 2 barrier ushering a new interstellar age of exploration for mankind. After this
came the NX vessels, such as Enterprise and eventually the formation of the federation
in 2161, which necessitated an upgrade to Starfleet’s technology, now bolstered by
the cooperation of the founding members. The Bonaventure class, the first of which
was the NX-1000 was designed in part, by Tobin Dax post-2163. He selected the human’s twin
nacelle design over the Vulcan ring as the Starfleet style offered greater flexibility
in the use of warp, suitable for the multipurpose missions Starfleet was expecting to undertake.
The Bonaventure class was to replace the NX-refit vessels as the UFP’s first deep space explorers
of the 22nd century. Aside from this hot mess of continuity, we
have two more vessels in the 23rd and 24th century to have the name Bonaventure, but
there’s not much to tell on these two, not even their model.
So How to untangle all this? And because there will be comments, I’m going to say this
now. Yes, this knot of contradictions is simply because the shows were revising their canon
as they went and TAS existed before Enterprise and books aren’t canon. But that’s no
fun so… pfft. For a start, the events of First Contact are
irrefutably shown in the film of that name, so Zephram Cochrane is not an Alpha Centauri
native, and his ship was not the Bonaventure, so we can discount that as old irrelevant
lore. However, we do see that there was indeed a C1-21 in canon that was intended to be Cochrane’s
vessel prior to the release of that film. Fortunately, no dates or specifics were given,
so we can interpret the C1-21 as merely a second, or third prototype, maybe a refinement
of the warp 1 engine, or even an early warp 2 attempt.
Now as the animated series introduced a new Bonaventure, all we know about it is what
the crew says, and this could be inaccurate. Sorry Scotty, but you have to be wrong, the
universe demands it. The Bonaventure here is seen covered in Starfleet decals so if
it is to fit with later canon, which supersedes TAS in this instance, it would have to be
post 2161. I guess it could be the first Starfleet ship to have warp drive based on some new
technology, but that would be a messy retcon too and a bit misleading.
Finally, there is the Bonaventure class which. The name was taken from the apocryphal content
and the animated show. Although an official product, This has no canon appearances at
all, but funnily enough doesn’t yet contradict anything so is the most viable ships of the
name to exist in canon lore. A good summary of the messy early warp drive lore can be
found at ex-astris-scientia which I’ll link below.
Sufficed to say, in Trek, the Bonaventure name is associated the early pioneering warp
experiments of humans and a necessary stepping stone to usher in a new interstellar age of
exploration for mankind. Even if nobody seems sure what or how that all happened. Thanks
for watching this video on the legacy of the Bonaventure.
This spun off from trying to make a video on that pocket universe, Elysium, so feel
free to suggest topics for me to look into as who knows where they’ll end up. Thanks
again, I’ve been Ric and until next time, goodbye!