Three Wire: So, no they couldn't aid the ship in going faster, but could help you get alongside. Oh, and the stokers were known to burn a bit of jet fuel in the ship's boilers as well!
I fail to see how it would *not* make the carrier go faster. Newton's Law and all that.
I once asked on the rowing newsgroup whether my old man's four could tow a warship - admittedly a small one - 100 metres in half an hour, as a publicity/fundraising stunt. Some serious mathematicians and hydrodynamicists came up with the answer that we probobly could.
The comment was also made that if you stood on the edge of the dock and pushed against the side of the Queen Mary (or the Nimitz) it would move ... eventually.