NAMING OF SHIPS

Evening Star, Issue 16991, 13 March 1919, Page 8

NAMING OF SHIPS

The practice adopted by our great shipping companies of naming some of their vessels after foreign countries and places, with many of which they are not and never can be connected in trade, is a conceit of the cosmopolitanism to which wo, almost alone among the nations, -are addicted (says the Saturday ‘Review’). Its inconvenience became apparent when the war broke out and the foreign country became an enemy country. An Index Expurgatorius had to be set up, as it was obviously improper that there should be a Galicia, a Oarinlhia, an Elbe, a Danube, a Teutonic, or a German afloat under the blue or the red ensign. Subject to this inconvenience a ship may suitably take her name from an alien country to which she usually carries passengers or with which she usually trades; but to name ships after an inland kingdom and a province of Italy which has no seaboard, as was deno in the case of two of the earlier fast Atlantic liners, the Serbia and Umbria, is paradoxical. Other examples in the pa-st of present Gunard fleet are the Lusitania, the Mauretania, and the Aurania. Lusitania is poetical for Portugal, but neither Mauretania nor Aunnia can he four don the atlas. The Cunard Company standardises its shipnames to the extent that they must all be nouns, with the classical caudal appendage —ia. So likewise does the White Star Company insist upon adjectives, and these must all end in ic. There was a Titanic, there is a Majestic, a Coptic, an Adriatic, and even a Bovic, but there is not yet an Hippie, an Avic, or a Biscic. A story, which if not true ia at least ben trovato, is told that an official of the company was hoard complaining (hat the tleet was increasing so rapidly that it was difficult to find -ic names for three now ships about to be launched, and that a sarcastic person, who no doubt had suffered from mal-ds-mer and other discomforts of the Atlantic voyage, protested that the difficulty was imaginary, “Why not cal! your three new ships the Dyspeptic, the Rheumatic, and the Emetic?” The aristocratic P. and O. Company, the chief shuttle in the loom of the Empire, for many years refrained from fancy nomenclature* but named its ships with especial regard’ to the places with which they traded. Thus the Delta and the Mussilia. marked the period before the ' Suez Canal was opened,and when the malls were earned from Marsaillcs to Alexandria and then to Suez by the overland route. Of Iftlo years, however, it has adopted what may be termed-to borrow a metaphor from the recruiting offioea croup or class system. An M SDOup, and also an “N" group, were launched, each of which was composed of vessels built a. out (.he same time nad for parUeular services. In the same group with a Mooltan was a Mainla, Monltnn is an appropriate mane for a ship carrying mails and passengers to Hindustan: but Manila. a pass m Switzerland. : is (he absolute antithesis of «n ocean huer. i Similarly, in order to fill m> the • N group, a Walloon oilv was violently wrenched from the laud and made .flotsam upon the Bay • of Bengal, when the N«mur. on her wauhm I voyage, steamed away front Madras with her 1 course set to the mouth oi tne Hugh. I The first largo ships of the. British ISayy I t„ Vr lost iu the present war were the - Cressv the Hogue, and the Aboukir It. 1 would'1)0 seen that Nemesis had ordained 1 that ships bearing the names of victories over our present allies across the Channel l must take no part in it.