Tenth Fleet Summit
| Tenth Fleet Summit | |
| Flag Event (FE) | |
| Type: | Fleet muster & annual gathering |
| Status: | Active |
| Location: | Rotating — conventions within the Tenth Fleet area of responsibility |
| When: | Annual |
| First held: | 2015 |
| Host: |  Tenth Fleet
|
The Tenth Fleet Summit is the annual in-person gathering of the Tenth Fleet. Rather than being tied to a single venue, the summit is held each year at a science-fiction convention somewhere within the fleet's area of responsibility — which spans California, Oregon, and Washington — and is hosted by a local echelon or chapter. It serves as the fleet's principal muster, bringing together the crews of its member chapters for a program of meetings and ceremonies over the convention weekend.
Format
As originally designed in 2015, the Tenth Fleet Summit is not a single meeting but a series of separate sessions held across the convention weekend, each aimed at a different tier of the fleet — so that there is something for essentially every level of the membership:
- Commanding Officers' Meeting — chapter commanding officers and echelon commanders meet with Fleet Staff to work through the how of executing the fleet's plan, with open questions and discussion on making things work at the chapter level in alignment with fleet direction.
- Senior Enlisted Meeting — the same format as the officers' meeting, but run by the FSMCPO specifically for bosuns, gunnies, and senior enlisted advisors. The enlisted track runs parallel to, and separate from, the officers' track.
- Flag Officers' Meeting — a smaller, more focused session for flag-rank officers and echelon command only, addressing higher-level topics such as echelon-support alignment and troubleshooting that do not need to be raised in front of the full room.
- Awards Ceremony — led by the Fleet Commanding Officer, presenting promotions, awards, and recognition for service over the previous fiscal year. It closes out the summit and sends members back to the convention floor on a positive note.
In addition to these sessions, summits have hosted commissioning ceremonies for newly formed chapters and vessels — for example, HMS Cerberus was commissioned at the 2015 summit.[1]
Host conventions
Because the Tenth Fleet's area of responsibility is geographically vast — spanning California, Oregon, Washington, and beyond — Fleet leadership (the Commanding Officer, Deputy Commanding Officer, and FSMCPO) established a practice of alternating the summit between northern and southern locations to keep travel distances equitable for the fleet's widely dispersed ships and members. Accordingly the summit rotates between northern venues in the Pacific Northwest — such as NorWesCon (SeaTac, Washington), OryCon (Portland, Oregon), and RadCon (Pasco, Washington) — and southern venues in California, principally BayCon (Santa Clara), with a nearby echelon or chapter serving as host each year.[2] In the north the host has typically been Battlecruiser Squadron 96 (SeaTac's NorWesCon, 2016 and 2018) or a local chapter such as HMS Eardsidh Kamerling (RadCon, 2020); in the south, Task Group 91.1 (2015, 2017, and 2019) and the fleet flagships HMS Medusa (2022 and 2024) and HMS Guadalcanal (2026). No fleet summit was held in 2023, when the TRMN-wide MantiCon was co-located with BayCon and the entire fleet travelled south to attend — an event hosted by The Royal Manticoran Navy: The Official Honor Harrington Fan Association, Inc. as a whole, with members flying in from across the organization to help run it.
Separately from the fleet-wide summit, when the summit was held in the north Task Group 91.1 convened its own Task Group 91.1 Summit for the task group's own (largely California-based) members at BayCon in 2016 and 2018. The destroyer HMS Chainshot was commissioned at the first of these, BayCon 2016.[1]
Summits by year
| Year | Convention | Location | Host | Notable events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | BayCon | Santa Clara, CA | Task Group 91.1 | Commissioning of HMS Cerberus |
| 2016 | NorWesCon | SeaTac, WA | Battlecruiser Squadron 96 | |
| 2017 | BayCon | San Mateo, CA | Task Group 91.1 | |
| 2018 | NorWesCon | SeaTac, WA | Battlecruiser Squadron 96 | |
| 2019 | BayCon | San Mateo, CA | Task Group 91.1 | |
| 2020 | RadCon | Pasco, WA | HMS Eardsidh Kamerling | Held that February, before the pandemic shutdown |
| 2022 | BayCon | San Mateo, CA | HMS Medusa | |
| 2023 | MantiCon | Santa Clara, CA | The Royal Manticoran Navy: The Official Honor Harrington Fan Association, Inc. as a whole | No separate Tenth Fleet Summit; the organization-wide MantiCon co-located with BayCon served the role, with members flying in from across TRMN to help run it |
| 2024 | BayCon | Santa Clara, CA | HMS Medusa | |
| 2025 | OryCon | Portland, OR | — | |
| 2026 | BayCon | Santa Clara, CA | HMS Guadalcanal | Designated a Flag Event by Tenth Fleet Order 2511-01[3] |
No fleet summit was held in 2021, when BayCon was cancelled/virtual and its northern conventions were likewise disrupted by the pandemic; the 2020 summit had gone ahead at RadCon that February, before the shutdown.[4] The BayCon-hosted summits of 2017, 2019, and 2022 were held at the San Mateo Marriott; BayCon relocated to the Santa Clara Marriott in 2023, the venue for the 2024 and 2026 summits. The host for the 2025 summit is not yet recorded here.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Task Group 91.1 — task group history documenting the 2015 summit and its commissioning.
- ↑ Tenth Fleet — fleet history documenting the host chapters and their home regions.
- ↑ Orders:Tenth Fleet Order 2511-01
- ↑ BayCon — convention history, including the 2020 cancellation and 2021 virtual event.