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Captain Harlock
A self-styled criminal mastermind, this mad scientist of Portuguese/Chinese descent is too weak-willed and unwilling to cause harm to be a true criminal. |
The self-styled Captain Harlock (of mixed Portuguese and Chinese descent) has a secret hideaway on Lamma Island, from where he demands his ransom from the China traders of Hong Kong. The Captain is a mad scientist, who has invented a freeze ray capable of turning the waters of the sea to ice thick enough to crush the hull of the wooden trading ships used by the hongs. Unless the hongs pay him a significant sum of money, he is threatening to cripple and sink their ships.
Captain Harlock is driven by greed, but he is basically a coward at heart, and has no desire to be hunted for murder for the rest of his life. Some of the Chinese merchants have already paid protection money to ensure the safety of their fleets, but none of the large Western hongs has acceded to his demands. Harlock has yet to fulfil his threats, and really does not want to. The thought of sailors being drowned as a result of his sinking their ship worries his conscience. So far, the risk that he might harm somebody has outweighed his greed.
The Captain is not a black-hearted villain. If the ambitions of his crew can be thwarted, perhaps by capturing them and returning them to the authorities on Hong Kong Island, he could be persuaded to reform. Although the characters would need to keep his ego suitably boosted, the captain, with his Frost Ship the Rime, could also be a useful ally. Conversely, he could be a great danger in the future if he offered his allegiance to Anarchists, the World Crime League, or the Steam Lords.
The ray works on a simple precept of the science: the relationship between temperature and pressure. A high-pressure stream of liquid focused through a narrow nozzle will cause evaporation with the sudden change in pressure, and a subsequent loss of energy that leads to freezing. The front two cargo compartments of the Rime contain large tanks capable of holding water at extremely high pressures, designed and constructed using a similar technology to that of deep-water submersibles (such as the Captain Nemo's Nautilus). Mighty pumps, powered by the steam turbines of the ship's engines, pressurise this liquid to several atmospheres and it is stored in the cylindrical tanks until needed.
When the Captain first developed his ray, he encountered some difficulties because the freezing point of salt water was far lower than that of pure water, and the energy required to supercool saline was much higher than could be generated by the converter. Furthermore, salt water proved corrosive to the valves. On the Rime, Harlock's primary supply of water was the sea, so it proved necessary to desalinate the water before converting it to ice. In a tank located in a compartment adjacent to the boiler room, seawater is heated resulting in evaporation. The resultant steam is used to power the ship's engines, and then condensed once more as pure water for use in the Freeze Ray. The salt residue from evaporation is discarded over the side of the vessel.
[GR]
Fencing 
[PR]
Helmsmanship