Cool Boat - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Epic Sail

Do you want to argue with my 200+ nuclear warheads? (Source: Bellona Foundation)

I'm on a boat motherfucker, take a look at me

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

— The Lonely Island - "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.

The picture is of the Soviet/Russian "Typhoon" class of nuclear missile submarines, real-life examples of the Cool Boat. The largest subs ever built, each can carry 20 ballistic missiles, each with 10 warheads and also nuclear-tipped anti-shipping missiles. Very roomy for a sub, it has a sauna and a small swimming pool on board, as well as having the ability to stay submerged for up to a year.

Under no circumstances confuse this with a Nice Boat... which is something entirely different and more disturbing.

Examples:

Anime

The Rabbit from Ergo Proxy, a sailing-boat that hovers over land.
Blue Submarine No. 6, from the anime of the same name.
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 can turn invisible at will. If that doesn't scream "cool", I don't know what does.
One Piece has a number of examples: there's the ships used by the Straw Hat Pirates, the Going Merry and the Thousand Sunny, as well as the floating restaurant Baratie.
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.
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.
The 'Undersea Battleship' Ra from Super Atragon was not only a Cool Boat but a Cool Submarine.
The DDG-182 Mirai, a fictional AEGIS-type Japanese Self-Defense Force destroyer from the Zipang! series. It found itself accidentally sent back to WWII by some strange phenomenon. Cool, because of its very realistic design (it is practically identical to a modern Atago class destroyer, albeit drawn a few years before the first Atago was built) and the fact that it scares the bejeezus out of both the Imperial Japanese Navy and the USN because of its modern armament. Also has a Cool Plane as a scout-recon aircraft.
The Nautilus of Nadia The Secret Of Blue Water lives up to its status as a updated descendent as the Coolest Boat of all.
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.
Eri from School Rumble owned one (anime only).
During the Orange Islands season of Pokemon, 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 travelled the seas on Ash's Lapras.

Comics

The escape submarine concealed in a "sinking" motorboat that the villain uses in that one Tintin book...help me out here...
- The Red Sea Sharks. You're welcome.
Various incarnations of the Batboat. Especially the ones that turn into a Batsub.
- In the Captain Leatherwing Elseworld, Pirate Batman has the Flying Fox.

Film

The RMS Titanic. Full stop.
- Well, they tried. It didn't work so well.
The Deep Core from The Abyss (an underwater oil rig, but cool nonetheless).
The Q-Boat from the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.
The Disco Volante from Thunderball, 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.
- Not just them. The British had the St. Georges - ugly trawler on the outside, sophisticated spy ship on the inside, and capable of launching Britain's nuclear arsenal. Needed more armour, though.
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 Yellow Submarine (which can also fly, time travel, launch giant cigars and survive being sucked into oblivion to name a few).
The Mariner's boat from Waterworld was pretty cool.
2012. The arkships.

Literature

The Red October from The Hunt For Red October. A modified "Typhoon" class submarine (see picture), with an (almost) silent drive system and 26 nuclear missiles as compared to the 20 that the other RL "Typhoons" 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 Crowning Moment Of Awesome, complete with Ominous Russian Chanting.
- A platform in Harpoon 4.
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). On the other hand, since it attacked surface ships by ramming them, it's surprising Captain Nemo never thought of inventing the torpedo. Also features in the film of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with the additional power of being able to navigate the channels of Venice while being several times taller than even the deepest of them.
- A ship of such coolness, that several later vessels (though the name is older than the novel- an 1800 sub was called Nautilus) have been named after it - including, appropriately enough, the world's first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus.
Several from A Series Of Unfortunate Events: The Carmelita, the Queequeg, the Great Unknown (although just what that is is left open)...
The gilded submarine Leif Erikson in the Illuminatus! trilogy, that functions as the headquarters for the Legion of Dynamic Discord.
And, of course, Skidbladnir of Norse Mythology, which belongs to the god Freyr, can fly, and can fold up to fit in a pocket. But what do you expect from the Vikings?
Not content with just one cool boat, Snow Crash has The Raft - a massive flotilla of refugee ships all attatched 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.
In John C Wright's 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 an entire spinoff series, The Oregon Files, for the sole purpose of bringing it and its crew back after their cameo debut in the Pitt novel Flood Tide.
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.
Minerva from Neal Stephenson's 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.
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.

Live Action TV

The "S.S.R.N. Seaview" sub from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea.
The eponymous submarine, hull number DSV-4600, from Sea Quest DSV. A Cool Boat in its own right, and carried a few other mini-Cool Boats aboard, including but not limited to the Stinger (underwater hot rod), the crab submersibles and the shuttles.
Thunder from Thunder In Paradise.
UFO. Skydiver, an atomic submarine with hydrofoil capability and a jet interceptor for a nose.
The Myth Busters once built a boat, the Yesterday's News, out of frozen newspapers. And attached a powerful motor to it. And it worked! (For about ten minutes before it started melting and the newspapers disintegrated, but still...) Can you get much cooler than a frozen boat?
- A frozen Aircraft carrier? Didn't get past the prototype stage, but took three summers to melt even that.
  - More recently, they constructed the Stuck On You out of freakin' duct tape! It held together even better.
The Pacific Princess from The Love Boat.

Music

The Lonely Island's "I'm On A Boat" is pretty much an ode to how cool The Boat is.

Video Games

The Archimedean Dynasty & Aquanox games prominently features many of these.
Pretty much the entire 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 hydrocraft from Deadly Tide.
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 Alaska class battlecruisers from Harpoon.
Arsenal Gear from Metal Gear Solid 2. Yes, it lacked every single advantage of a Metal Gear, in alphabetical order. It was also a pretty swanky ship.
- I'd say being armed with memes is just as advantageous as being armed with nukes.
- Also, its improved version, Outer Haven from Metal Gear Solid 4.
The King of Red Lions from The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker is a cool-looking boat who doubles as your Ninja Butterfly.
- Don't forget Phantom Hourglass where you get to customize Linebeck's/your very own Cool Boat.
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.
HYYYYYYDROOOO THUUUUNDEERRRRR!!!
Ace Combat 5 has the Scinfaxi and Hrimfaxi submarines, which are also aircraft carriers somehow.
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 WW 2 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.
Villainous example: the Myrmidon, flagship of Artemis Global Security in Tom Clancy's HAWX. Armed with super-advanced cruise missiles that outrange an entire US Navy carrier group, powerful anti-air batteries, and can absorb as much damage as its entire attendant escort fleet combined.
The SS Tea Cup in Wario Land 1 and 2, arguably. Large enough to serve as an entire 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.
Tidal Wave is the Cool Boat. And did I mention that he's the biggest Transformer in the game by a long shot?
The Lemurian ship from Golden Sun. For one thing, it can only be moved using Psyenergy. Later, it gains wings, which allow it to hover above the water (or land) using said Psyenergy. Later still, a cannon is installed
The huge warship the Defias Brotherhood is building within the Deadmines.
Chousokabe 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.
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. (it's impossible to tell how the fanbase received this)

Western Animation

Spoofed on The Simpsons with the Show Within A Show "Knight Boat, the Crime-Solving Boat".
Spoofed in Family Guy with the S.S. More Powerful Than Batman, Spider-Man, and the Incredible Hulk Put Together.
The Jammy Dodger from the animated film Flushed Away.
The Yellow Submarine. Capable of doing just about anything whatsoever... provided you can find the proper button.
- Including deploying Confederate cavalry.
The titular submarine from Stingray.
Thunderbird 4, from Thunderbirds. Also a yellow submarine, also capable of doing pretty much anything underwater. Torpedoes, lasers, the works.
From 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!

Web Original

The Alternate History Decades Of Darkness features battleships with 18-inch cannons - bigger than almost anything in our world.
Open Blue encourages players to make their own Cool Ship, within certain reasonable boundaries. The modification system helps add variety (some examples include Greek Fire, Harpoon cannons, and a bow-mounted, man-powered drill).

Real Life