French Navy Invades Second Life

The navy that won at Beachy Head, Yorktown, and Koh Chang, and scuttled itself rather than be captured is now taking on Second Life.

Port calls are a fact of life and a regular bonus for sailors of any blue water navy. France, one of the oldest and most impressive of these, recently dispatched a guided missile frigate to make a port call to an online community. It seems the French Navy has cooked up a virtual hi-tech frigate and sailed it into the docks of Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003. Second life is reported to have about 11 million online members and the French navy is looking to recruit a few for service in RL (that’s Real Life for those of you not who are not down).

The Frigate was in the game for a weeklong port call complete with a cornucopia of crew members in interesting job fields such as combat divers, carrier pilots, naval officers and others. Tours of the ship were given as is standard with any port calls and a contest was run for Second Lifers to register for an excursion on a real frigate.

It is not known if any of the frigates crew members missed ships movement, got in bar fights with marines ashore, or got tattoos that say the wittiest things in a foreign language that they don’t speak.....but we will keep you informed.

There is always the Sims, maybe the Army could try that......j/k