I was recently wondering why we hear so little of the Federation Merchant Marine, since they according to beta canon (and parts of TOS) operate not only freighters, haulers and tankers, but also even border patrol and police vessels. Logically, they should be pretty ubiquitous; and perhaps they are, given that we rarely see them call out a “Starfleet freighter” in the few episodes where freighters play a role, it’s usually a “Federation freighter”, which could be shorthand for the M. M.
What’s even more interesting though, most of the ships listed on Memory Beta in the article about the Merchant Marine seem to have no trace of that information on their own pages. Is this a case of missing information on the ship pages, or false information on the M. M. list?
Out of universe the explanation is clear I think - it’s simply because the writers did not know or care for that part of canon and “Federation hauler” gets the point across just as much as talk about the Merchant Marine. But given that they should be a huge industrial backbone of the Federation, with their own rank system, commissioned officers and all, it’d be logical to hear more about them, their regulations and laws and all.
I’m just wondering what in-universe way there could be to reconcile these irregularities.
I think part of the original intent was to have Starfleet be that Merchant Marine fleet and serve similar roles, however that was largely left on the cutting room floor. As a result I think the best way to understand a Merchant Marine ship like perhaps the SS Puget Sound (a Federation colony ship) could indeed be a Starfleet vessel (made by Starfleet), commissioned by the Federation, but commanded by a crew which hold Merchant Marine ranks and not Starfleet ranks. A Federation Colony Ship.
This would help explain the massive function of a 22nd or 23rd century Starfleet being operated entirely by a military organization. It’s not, many aspects of the fleet are controlled by the Merchant Marine service. A Federation Freighter likewise would be any freighter commissioned by the Federation and therefore likely to be crewed by the MMs.