Australian coal powered freighters

[Olefin]

Found something interesting that could give GM's and those doing writing projects some ships that would be very useful in 2000 with oil being as rare as it is.

In the mid 1980's, with fuel prices on the rise, four coal powered freighters, the first new ones in decades were built for the bauxite trade in Australia

The River Boyne and the River Embley were two of them

Gross tonnage: 51,000 tons
Deadweight: 76,000 tons
Crew: 38
Range: 4500 nautical miles with a full load of 3000 tons of coal
Speed: Average 11-12 knots

These are big ships with plenty of room to mount artillery, anti-aircraft, missiles, etc.. to defend them and to haul a lot of cargo or if refitted people - not comfortably but beats being stuck with no way out

And in a world where oil is rare the Australian coal reserves would be more than enough to keep them operating

Ships like that could be used as a way of transporting player characters for Pacific and Indian Ocean campaigns, either as part of the adventure or as a back story on how they got there. And the Australians could modify the ships to get better range by adding additional coal storage at the cost of cargo capacity.

Ships like that could be a focus of an adventure for instance where you are hired on to help defend the ship in exchange for passage.

Or you could have the Australians load one up with coal so they could refule once they got there and send all four to Korea to evacuate their troops there and as many Americans as could fit and bring them to Australia to help restore order there

Or have them being used between Australia and another country with coal reserves still available within either their original range or a modified one where they would be hauling less cargo and more coal, thus keeping open at least some trade possibilities for Australia.