'HOW THE KING'S SHIPS ARE NAMED.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 170, 19 July 1924, Page 25

'HOW THE KING'S SHIPS ARE NAMED.

\BT FKA>_- C. BOWEX.)

-,r , the United States there is a rumour ? that the Pullman cars are named by a : X} pensioner of the company who sits : fa L-Town home nnd works through a , SL book of reference, petting a dollar ' to every coach that ,he name, which ■ L supposed to account for the peculiar ' gties which some of their cars boar on : Sieir sides; and it must often appear tea layman that the Kings ships are £_>ed on a very similar system. As a Of fact there arc so many conations involved in the selection, . political and otherwise, that there is Lall wonder that the names chosen ' sometimes appear to bo very inappropri- : «te and the keen young officer is left fumin" at the discovery that the First Command in which he takes such pride - bears the name of a flower that the poets • would rave about, or something similarly "warlike." The responsibility for the naming of ships is nominally that ot the First Lord, and it is often a very useful job, but when it comes* to naming some scores of sister ships it is generally relegated to some official -with a knowledge of naval history. In the past all sorts of people have been responsible —often the courtiers w ho wished to make an impression on the king, and very often the Sovereign hunself." Queen Elizabeth certainly had a very keen interest in the naming of her Ships, and ber influence is to be seen in the "ood round names which were de-gjir-cd t° hearten a people who had good reason to he appn-hensive —the Dreadnought, Victory, Swiftsurc, and the like. The Roundheads chose the names of the battles in which they had defeated the kin" and dubbed all other titles "malicious," while Charles 11. and the early Hanoverians found in warships' names a cheap method of rewarding deBervin <T folks who might otherwise be inclined to ask for some more concrete acknowledgment of their services. One of the earliest systems, which probably arose from the very ancient days when ships were taken up into the fleet for the period of hostilities and ge_erally had to be differentiated by the names of their home ports—the imagination of our forefathers appears to have been extraordinarily limited when it came to christening ships—was the territorial, and this is the system which finds the greatest favour in most foreign navies on account of the local interest that is generated. At the same time there are disadvantages even to th is, for when we built ' the cruisers of the ''County" class it was decided that the Kent should be built at Portsmouth, the Hampshire on the Tyne, the Devonshire at Chatham and so on right down the list. The reason for this was .apparently that the authorities thought that if a ship were built in her own county the men would take so much pride in her from the first, and be so determined to make her the best ship of the class, that there would be no keeping any adequate check on her cost. Many of the names which have been handed down from ship to ship have come into the Navy by capture, and some of the mythological names which, feature so largely are borrowed from the French in ithis way. Sometimes they were Anglicised, but sometimes they came in their original form, the idea once being • that if a ship put up a particularly gallant fight she should —if she were worth keeping at the end of it—be allowed to keep her old name; but unfortunately this chivalrous scheme was not maintained in all cases. Many other mythological names came into the list when Lord Swidwich was at the helm, and the copy of Lempriere's Classical Dictionary whi.b he used is Still preserved at the Adml-ulty. It is said of this same Lord Sandwich that being suddenly called upon to find tallies for a big flotilla of new small craft he just borrowed the names of his pack of hounds. It may be an undignified manner of choosing names for His Majesty's -hips, but, at- all events, the names "so chosen—Blazer, Bustard, Snap, Pickle and the like —have a fine sound for small craft -that are made for fighting and dash. And after all it is very much on a par with the war-time official who was suddenly asked to bring out botanical names for the fifty sloops of tho Herbaceous Border type which had then just been ordered, and found them all in his own garden. Some of the names have come to us through the East India Company— Glatton, for instance—and they had so many interests and got their ships from so many different quarters that this left a loop-hole for all sorts of quaint names to get in, although most of them stayed in by their fighting records in "eighteen hundred and war-time." Other names which have had a wonderful fighting reputation have been dropped out of the list on account of some catastrophe wiiich will always be connected with them, and of these' may be mentioned the Captain, Atalanta, and iurydice. They are all of them good names, but it is doubtful if they will ever be repeated. The chooser of names has no easy task, for among other things he has to think of what the bluejacket will make M them, and he has a sense of humour Which is not always respectful to his ™p. Others have deliberately chosen humorously, and of these the most famous case is that of the little tender which was taken up on the African Coast in the days of the slave warte. The admiral in command of the station commissioned her as H.Ms Humbug which suggests that he knew /•good deal of the preparation of «aaims for prize-money in those days