Battle Frankies

Cutty Flam, the shipwright who would later take the name Franky, gave each vessel in this line the label Battle Franky followed by a number, running from one all the way up to thirty-five. Though none stretched beyond the size of a small rowboat, every unit packed heavy firepower: rows of cannons, supplementary guns, and on several models, plating, turrets, and assorted mechanical gadgets. That dense armament let craft no bigger than dinghies trade blows with proper battleships.

Franky's original purpose for the line was to hunt down Sea Kings. He worked through a long string of unsuccessful prototypes before finally killing one of the beasts using BF 35, the strongest and final model of the run. Among the earlier numbers, BF 8 carried a stern-mounted barbette with three guns and a single mast before it smashed apart against Scrap Island, while BF 9 sported a gun-studded metal sphere. Higher counts such as BF 18 and BF 30 turned up later during the assault on the Judicial Ship. After the Sea Train crippled Franky's body, he rebuilt himself as a cyborg and kept the numbering going, branding his own frames BF 36, the rebuilt 'Armored Me' BF 37, and the giant docking robot General Franky as BF 38.

The series belongs entirely to Franky, who conceived and constructed every model. Three days after he triumphed with BF 35, Spandam and the agents of CP5 seized the ships, turned them against the Judicial Ship, and used the attack to pin the crime on Tom, Iceburg, and Franky, wrecking most of the fleet in the process. In a much later SBS, Oda sketched possible futures where the count climbs to a destructive BF 50 and even a BF 70, the latter being Franky reimagined as a complete battleship.