In the Battle of Wolf 359, one ship survives. Which one was it and why did it survive?

Question

In "TNG: The Best of Both Worlds," 40 Starfleet starships under the command of Admiral J.P. Hanson gather near Wolf 359 to intercept a Borg cube ship traveling to Earth. (The Star Trek Encyclopedia (1999), by Mike Okuda, Denise Okuda, and Debbie Mirek)

From (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II"):

RIKER: The Enterprise'll be there, sir. Maybe a little late, but we'll be there, sir.

HANSON [on monitor]: Your engagements have given us valuable time. We've mobilised a fleet of forty starships at Wolf three five nine, and that's just for starters. The Klingons are sending warships. Hell, we've even thought about opening communications with the Romulans.*

According to dialog in "TNG: The Drumhead," 39 ships are destroyed.

SATIE: Tell me, Captain, have you completely recovered from your experience with the Borg?

PICARD: Yes, I have completely recovered.

SATIE: It must have been awful for you, actually becoming one of them, being forced to use your vast knowledge of Starfleet operations to aid the Borg. Just how many of our ships were lost? Thirty nine? And a loss of life, I believe, measured at nearly eleven thousand. One wonders how you can sleep at night, having caused so much destruction. I question your actions, Captain. I question your choices. I question your loyalty.

I don't remember hearing of a ship surviving or anyone discussing it, but I just did the math.

From (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II"):

RIKER: Slow to impulse. Take us to the battle coordinates, Mister Crusher. Yellow alert.

WORF: Sensors are picking up several vessels, Captain.

RIKER: The fleet?

DATA: No active subspace fields. Negligible power readings.

RIKER: Life signs?

DATA: Negative, sir.

WORF: Visual contact.

RIKER: On screen.

By the time that the Enterprise arrived, there were no life signs or power readings from the remaining hulls. So it appears none of the ships survived, unless one fled during the battle... but we still have the math 40-39=1.

What was the name of the one ship that survived the battle? What happened to it? Why did it survive? How did it survive? Did any of the crew aboard the surviving ship survive?

Answer 1

While no definitive list of the 40 ships was ever made, it's also important to keep in mind that the dialogue doesn't necessarily indicate any ships escaped or survived the battle unscathed. Assuming Hanson wasn't just rounding up to 40 in casual conversation, it simply means that all but one of the ships were destroyed or irreparably damaged in the battle.

Here is Admiral Satie's quote with a slightly different emphasis:

SATIE: It must have been awful for you, actually becoming one of them, being forced to use your vast knowledge of Starfleet operations to aid the Borg. Just how many of our ships were lost? Thirty nine? And a loss of life, I believe, measured at nearly eleven thousand. One wonders how you can sleep at night, having caused so much destruction. I question your actions, Captain. I question your choices. I question your loyalty.

On-screen, most of the ships we saw in the aftermath were complete losses, floating about in numerous pieces. It's entirely possible that the last ship had fairly minor damage and the crew died to a radiation leak, loss of atmosphere, or some other similar catastrophe that would kill the crew without necessarily harming the vessel. In such a case, the ship itself would not have been considered lost, even though the crew was lost or forced to evacuate.

In fact, just knowing that thousands of crew members were forced to evacuate their own ships brings up another interesting point. Several crewmembers - including Benjamin & Jake Sisko - were using escape pods, which are short-range and would need to be recovered by a ship before they could leave the system. If this was done immediately following the battle (and therefore before the Enterprise arrived), then that certainly accounts for at least one ship that would have HAD to escape the battle in one piece. It would also explain why the Enterprise detected no life signs when we know for a fact that hundreds of people survived the battle and would have been floating around in escape pods or damaged shuttles otherwise.

UPDATE: At least one ship - the USS Ahwahnee - was salvaged after the battle & repaired, being back in active service less than a year later. The point about evacuation aside, and even if we assume all other vessels were outright destroyed, then this could be considered the one ship that wasn't lost (from a logistical viewpoint).

TRIVIA: According to the game Star Trek: Borg, during the fight the USS Righteous was transported ten years into the future, therefore surviving the battle relatively undamaged. At the time of The Drumhead, however, the ship would have been presumed destroyed and most likely counted among the thirty-nine lost vessels.

Answer 2

You're not going to get an answer. According to this interview with Michael Okuda:

The various "mystery" ships in the BOBW2 listings in the Encyclopedia were all ships that were either referred to in dialog, or were models that were filmed for the "graveyard" scene. We did not make up any specifically to flesh out the Encyclopedia, although we (the production staff) did NOT come up with a definitive list of ships in the battle. I was tempted to try to develop one, but it occured to me that future episodes might need to "remember" a previously forgotten Wolf 359 ship for as-yet-unwritten storylines, just as the DS9 pilot did with Sisko's ship, the Saratoga.

Larry's list in the Companion was info that I provided to him.

That same website has a page that sums up everything known about the ships involved in the battle.

Answer 3

Despite the circumstances, the conversation you cite between Riker and Hanson is a bit casual and informal in tone. It's quite plausible, if not even probable, that Hanson was simply rounding 39 up to 40 for the sake of conversational convenience.

Answer 4

Janeway quoted USS Enedavour's Captain Amazov in Scorpion Part 1: "In all my years I could never imagine terror such as this. Cold. Calculating... Murderous. It is just a matter of pure luck that any of us are alive right now. The Borg are as close to pure evil as any race we've ever encountered." So they definitely encountered the Borg, and barely survived.

Endeavour was seen in Redemption parts 1 and 2, a year after Wolf 359. The ship at the time lacked a full crew complement.

It's not canon that Amazov and the Endeavour encountered the Borg at Wolf 359. But it's consistent with what is canon. And per a non-canon comic, the USS Endeavour was the surviving ship.

Answer 5

There's also the Pearl Harbor factor. All of the ships sunk at Pearl Harbor were raised and placed back in service, except for two. But nobody says "we lost two ships" at Pearl Harbor; it's spoken of as a much broader disaster.

We assume Starfleet vessels fought until unable - at which point the Borg would ignore them. They are less likely to be recovered than 1941 Navy ships due to their propensity to explode... but fair chance damage control teams were able to stabilize quite a few. So I would expect a great deal more than one to be recovered and returned to service.

I would also figure any ship that couldn't quickly leave the site was evacuated, and presumably that evacuation happened before Enterprise's arrival, otherwise it creates a narrative problem in the story where Enterprise abandons survivors.

Answer 6

Some years ago I compiled a definitive list of the ships that were at the engagement. I have concluded that the "surviving ship" could be one of two that were used later in the series:

• The USS AHWAHNEE - appeared later in the Romulan Taskforce
• The USS MELBOURNE - Excelsior class - appeared later in DS9 and Voyager.

Answer 7

I always understood it that the Enterprise was the one surviving ship? I don't really read anything that doesn't fit with that assumption. I mean Hanson states they mobilised a fleet of 40 ships but is there a reason that Statement would not include the Enterprise?

If it was meant that way the next most likely survivor is the Yamaguchi, it was reused (The model with the lettering anyways) in DS9 later and it is supposed to have been repaired and made the prototype of it's own subclass by various beta sources.

Answer 8

In Voyager, it is said that the Melbourne, the Kyushu and the Endeavor did not survive. I am going with the Saratoga because they had to pick up the remaining crew ejected in escape pods and must have had power to do it.