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March 21, 2002
Move to take the sex out of ships sparks a mutiny
By Alan Hamilton and Geoff Brown
SEAFARERS everywhere were outraged yesterday by the news that ships are to be
unsexed.
In the mind of the mariner, his vessel is his mistress, and incontrovertibly feminine,
as she has been from ancient times. But Lloyd’s List, the 268-year-old London-based
daily shipping newspaper and bible of the mercantile world, has decided to drop the
gender andwill henceforth refer to a ship not as “she”, but “it”.
Julian Brady, the newspaper’s editor, said yesterday that ships were nothing more
than mercantile real estate. Calling an elegant cruise liner “she” was all very well,
but
it could be offensive to apply the feminine pronoun to some rusting old hulk.
“We are a serious business paper for shipping. It may be a tradition to call ships
‘she’, but in standard journalistic practice ships should be referred to as ‘it’. The
world
moves on,” Mr Brady said.
Naval and merchant seafarers were united in their objections. The Ministry of
Defence said: “Lloyd’s List can do what they want. The Royal Navy will continue to
call its ships ‘she’ as we have always done. It is historic and traditional.”
Britain’s two major fleet owners, P&O and Cunard Line, were similarly adamant that
their vessels would remain thoroughly female. “Ships have personalities and souls;
we call them ‘she’ instinctively,” a spokesman for Cunard Line said.
Noel Coward understood the matter perfectly, as he did other issues of gender. In his
1942 classic wartime film In Which We Serve, Chief Petty Officer Bernard Miles
raises his glass: “I propose the health of one who’s very dear to me, a creature of
many moods and fancies. She’s very often uncertain, hard to please, but I’m devoted
to her with every fibre of my being.” At this point his wife, played by Joyce Carey,
looks up at him adoringly.
“Ladies and gentlemen, HMS Torrin,” Miles says, to her obvious disappointment.
Celia Johnson, the captain’s wife in the same epic, describes the ship as her enemy
because it dominates the affections of her husband. “It holds first place in his head;
it
comes before wife, home, children, everything,” she says with despair, but with the
understanding of a sailor’s wife.
Ships have been “she” at least since Roman times, and most inflected languages
have “ship” as a feminine noun: navis in Latin, nave in Italian,and safina in Arabic.
Perversely, the French regard bâteau as masculine, and the Germans go their own
way with Das Schiff as a neuter noun.
Pieter van der Merwe, of the National Maritime Museum, said that there was no
general agreement as to why ships had assumed the feminine gender. “It may be
because they were once dedicated to goddesses whose figure was carved on the
bow to protect against storms,” he said, “or it may be because ships, like women, are
expensive and difficult to handle. The history of the matter is much obscured by
male-chauvinist jokery.”
Alternative theories suggest that the ship became feminine because it was the only
woman allowed at sea, and was treated with deference and respect; others say that
mariners spending a long time at sea came to regard the ship as their mother.
Mr van der Merwe said that the National Maritime Museum would continue to regard
ships as feminine, if only because of tradition. He said: “Once you start dismantling
the linguistic element, you start dismantling the culture. These traditions have long
antiquity, and should be preserved.”
The unsexing of ships was also resisted yesterday by the British Marine Industries
Federation, which organises the International Boat Show in London and
Southampton. The organisation said that it regarded the Lloyd’s List decision as an
example of a creeping and unwelcome political correctness.
A spokesman said: “It’s like hurricanes. They always used to have female names,
now they have male and female. And now it’s boats. Our owners will continue to refer
to their boats as ‘she’ because they are part of the family.”
Women, on the other hand, may agree with Coward; “she” is more a mistress than a
wife.
End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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