The Mare Nostrum was a fictional experimental scientific vessel built around a prototype "automatic anti-oil pollution system" (AAOPS). The vessel appeared prominently in John Gardner's 1994 James Bond continuation novel, SeaFire.
Appearances[]
The Mare Nostrum served as a laboratory for marine biologist, Dr. Rex Rexinus, and his two biochemist colleagues, Vesta Motley, and Professor Anton Fritz. They had been tasked with designing an anti-oil pollution system for entrepreneur (and secretly, Nazi), Sir Max Tarn. The ship was described as a sleek, exotic-looking motorized yacht approximately 250 feet (76.2 m) long. Aft of the wheelhouse was a long, square Plexiglas framework that looked like a modern greenhouse. It climbed higher than the wheelhouse, and the edges along the top were curved. The vessel's mortarlike spraying tubes poked into the air at forty-five-degree angles and were designed to spray an experimental foam on oil spills — which would, in theory, suck up the oil and purify the water.
However, after a year of costly development, the equipment still did not function correctly as of April 1994[1]; by which time the mentally-unstable Tarn had scheduled a practical demonstration of the technology dubbed "Operation SeaFire". During the demonstration off the north coast of Puerto Rico, Tarn's old submarine would torpedo an oil tanker - creating the natural disaster which Dr. Rexinus's equipment would neutralize. If they failed, they would likely be consumed by the flames. Knowing that the AAOPS was incapable of preventing the catastrophe, 007 boarded and sabotaged the submarine with explosives before it could fire on the tanker. He then swam to the nearby Mare Nostrum and rescued the scientists from their captor, Conrad Spicer. The vessel's fate is unknown.
Trivia[]
- Mare Nostrum (Latin: "Our Sea") was a Roman nickname for the Mediterranean Sea.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 See John Gardner's timeline.