What’s a LASH barge? LASH is an acronym for “Lighter Aboard SHip” (the term “lighter” is a nautical term referring to a large flat bottomed barge used in loading/unloading ships). These LASH barges are loaded with cargo, then picked up by a large onboard gantry crane and loaded aboard a LASH Ship (known as the “LASH Mothership”). These 900’ long ships, carrying up to 89 LASH barges, across the Ocean then offload their barges at ports where tugs are waiting to tow them to their final destination. This process is then reversed at overseas destination ports. The advantage of the LASH system is that these shallow draft barges can go right to a clients dock or be towed places where ports don’t even exist!

But the clever folks who designed the “LASH barges” and the “LASH Mothership” were not content to rest. They next built what is known a “FLASH Ship”. A “FLASH Ship” (acronym for “Floating LASH Ship”) is a smaller “feeder” ship that collects LASH barges to bring to the “Mothership”. What is cool about a FLASH Ship is that it is designed to be partially submerged so that the LASH barges can be floated on top of it. When the barges are in “position” the ship is “dewatered” and rises up underneath the barges (pretty clever huh)?

OK, so you might be wondering… ”Why build an office on a LASH barge”? Well, here goes…Normal barges are made of steel and as you know, steel rusts in salt water. So steel barges have to be “dry-docked” (taken out of the water) and painted every few years, but not Star Fleet’s barge. During the mid-70s, Northrop Corporation, out in California, built a series of high-tech, all fiberglass LASH barges for the military at a cost of over $338k per barge. The walls and floor of these barges are at least 6 inches thick and are of “honeycomb” construction so they contain hundreds of thousands of air chambers (virtually unsinkable). These “air chambers” also serve as insulation so you’ll notice that our kitchen downstairs, which is actually built in the barge, requires no insulation in the walls.
So there you have it…low maintenance, virtually unsinkable, insulated walls and floor…a perfect foundation for your next floating home or floating office.