Need help with a tactical problem

[Schone23666]

Originally Posted by simonmark6

The amount of damage you have described is pretty catastrophic.

If the ship is listing the boiler explosion has caused either a breech in the hull or popped enough welds to cause a major leak. It also means that the cargo hold has the potential to be partially flooded in order to cause the ship to list. An explosion that has caused that much damage is likely to have killed anyone in the hold and damaged or flooded any valuable cargo.

The fire is also an issue. Fires in ships are nasty and will have caused major toxic issues, also, I would be very surprised if the Coast Guard haven't formed a cordon and be crawling all over the ship to contain the fuel oil that is likely to be leaking from it. That means the harbour is full of HAZMAT boats and oil-spill cleaners are on the way.

Inside the ship, not only are the walls metal but the ship is listing so everything is canted at an angle. Below decks the corridors are coated with toxic soot and anyone not in BA is likely to suffer horrible effects. A boiler explosion that has caused a breech is also likely to have twisted ladders and steps up and down and caused some doors to be distorted and impossible to open.

I find it unlikely to think of any detectives being in the ship unless they're following a lead. Fire Investigators and HAZMAT personnel, yes, but local plods, no. The scene is a major environmental incident first and a crime scene second.

The heroes would be better off posing as a HAZMAT clean-up crew than a traditional SWAT breeching unit. I also don't see the point of a helicopter gunship back up, or the snipers: any incident will be inside rather than out.

My father was a fireman and worked in one of the largest docks in the UK (Port Talbot deep ore port: not much in transit but massive ships). If there had been an incident like that, crews would have been coming in from across the country and by the next day, international teams would be on the way.

This, of course may depend on the country it is set in, but a listing ship which has had a catastrophic explosion and fire is highly unlikely to be deserted the next morning.

I'd go for a high-tension infiltration with the heroes sneaking in wearing high vis and BA rather than tooled up for bear. In many ways this makes for a much scarier environment: the situation is dangerous and when the SHTF you don't even have the big guns to bail you out. This could be a really dramatic situation with lots of horror moments depending on the nature of your terror.

Thanks SimonMark6. A lot of really good points here. As you can probably guess I'm not very well-versed in naval/maritime knowledge. I thought later with a boiler explosion that would very well indeed create a LOT of problems.

So instead I might write that the cargo vessel is more like a ghost ship (not literally of course) that ended up sailing into the harbor without responding to any hails from the port authority or coast guard. The ship scraped alongside a pier and sustained some damage but is still afloat. What's eerie is that there doesn't appear to be anyone aboard....other than signs of chaos. Blood spatter, bullet holes, discarded Kalashnikov rifles and shell casings with other ominous signs are everywhere but no corpses....except for the captain, who if found is inside his locked cabin, dead from a self-inflicted pistol shot to the head with his eyes frozen in sheer horror. And the power system to the ship appears to have failed, so again it's dark with only the emergency lighting now on.

Instead of daytime, it's nighttime....within hours of the incident the heroes are flown to the site to investigate what exactly happened, and it's snowing and freezing cold. As for where this is taking place, New York harbor. So most likely NYPD, Port Authority and Coast Guard will be on the scene.

So, now back to how one should approach a search of the ship when they believe a high value target or cargo is in the interior. Are there anything to consider in particular or should it go somewhat similar as one would consider doing MOUT in a room-to-room, corridor by corridor tactical situation?

As for the supernatural horror in question, let's just say I'm going for a bit of a Lovecraft vibe.