Greenland was a trading nation. The best way to make money was to sell your products overseas. Which meant having ships to take those products to market. The Greenlandian Navy had watched with interest the conversion of the various classes of ship to aircraft carriers. Of particular interest was the mercantile conversion of the ex-Italian liner to HMS Argus. Greenland's observers went over the Argus with a fine tooth comb to see how the merchant hull had taken the conversion. The Navy never had enough money to build everything it wanted to build. This included aircraft carriers. The lowering of the size of carriers from the Tanit to the Chemosh was purely driven by the need to save money.
The Goddess Astarte gave her name to the lead ship of the class.
So Greenland looked at building a class of merchant ships which would be partially funded by the Navy and have those ships be available for conversion to merchant aircraft carriers at a future date. During the ships merchant life a portion of its earnings would go back to the Navy as a return on its original investment. Certainly a win-win situation. Next was to figure out what size of vessel would be best. Type of motive power. All the things that would make it easier to convert in the long run. The first of these ships was laid down in 1930 and completed in 1934 as the Astarte. More ships were laid down at regular intervals, for service out on the trade routes. The ships only really required one funnel. The forward funnel was a dummy to aid the aesthetics of the ship.
The Melqart was in Carthage harbour when war broke out and was transferred to the Navy dockyard to begin conversion to an aircraft carrier. The conversion was much more comprehensive than the later US escort carrier types. In the Greenland Navy they were termed light carriers, but because of their low speed the rest of the world termed them CVE's. The ships were completed with very good command and control functions that would allow the Captain of the ship to be convoy Commodore while his second in command could run the ship. An air commander would run the air squadrons.
These little carriers would prove their worth, time and time again. Any convoy that had an escort carrier with it had a much greater chance of fighting off any U-boat threats. The Melqart also took part in the Mediterannean as escort carrier with the invasion craft. As more of these conversions joined they went to more and more areas that required their services. The final conversion would join in February 1943. It took time for the twelve conversions to process through the dockyards with each conversion taking 15-18 months each. Pilots and aircraft needed to be trained and built for these ships and the new Chemosh class, and to replace losses aboard the existing ships.
Each ship had six of the small but long endurance spotter aircraft, especially developed for the small carriers, for sub hunting around the convoys. Each one could carry a 250lb bomb or depth charge. These were backed with fifteen bombers and fifteen of the hybrid fighter-bombers.
