SHIPS NO LONGER "SHE", MERELY

SHIPS NO LONGER “SHE”, MERELY “IT”: “Group Captain Lionel Mandrake” is reporting (check out his source…) that:

Lloyd’s List, founded in London in 1734 (making it one of the world’s oldest daily publications), will no longer be referring to ships as “she”. From here on they will be known as “it”.

Hmmmm …… sounds about right – given the soul-less nature of modern ship design. Imagine a fully-rigged tea clipper – the Cutty Sark – barelling down the English Channel in a 30-knot wind, bit between her teeth, close-hauled to the wind, racing to be the first into London with the new season’s tea. Nobody with a romantic sould would call her anything but “she”.

One is an incurable romantic.

I’m really curious as to why the editor of Lloyd’s is doing this. Is this something that politically correct female sailors have been clamoring for? Have Oprah or Rosie gone on TV to decry the feminization of nautical pronouns? What do the women of DACOWITS think of this?

Hey, even on Star Trek: The Next Generation, set in a Marxist, uber-PC future, with the Federation modeled after the worst excesses of the UN, the Enterprise is still “a she”.

(Slipping into John Belushi doing Capt. Kirk) “But for…how long?…how…long…?”