Oh, policeman, policeman, you do me great wrong
('Way! Hey! Blow the man down!)
I'm a Flying Fish sailor, just home from Hong Kong—
Give me some time to blow the man down!)
—Old chantey.
With pardonable and understandable pride, that old-time sailorman remonstrated with the peeler for mistaking his identity. And it's safe to bet that no small amount of that pride came from the imagination-stirring name of his ship, the clipper Flying Fish.
Those were the days in which ships were named Herald of the Morning, Flying Cloud, Sweepstakes and the like. The name of a ship was the battle-cry of her men; the hard-pressed shellback had but to bellow "State of Maine!" or "Nightingale!" from the bottom of a heap of waterfront plug-uglies—or police—and any of his shipmates within hearing would fly to his aid with table-legs, paving-stones or any other weapon which came readily to hand.
Granting, for the sake of argument, that a modern seafaring man might have some pride in his ship, can you imagine him giving the retort courteous with any such balderdash as "I'm a P. & T. Adventurer sailor, just home from Hong Kong"?
We've come a long way, in our transition from single topsails to diesel-electric drive, and from the cheep, cheep, cheep of the master-caulker's mallet to the snap and pop of the chewing-gum of Wanda the Welder. And when it comes to selecting names for ships, our progress has not been uniformly upward.
Particularly in America, there has been a trend away from such inspiring names as Lightning, Sovereign of the Seas, and Shenandoah, and toward names which serve to advertise the particular unguent or nostrum upon which the ship's owner has built his fame and fortune. Perhaps this phenomenon stems from the fact that in windjammer days ships were, by and large, owned by purely seafaring people. Today's ownership may be vested in the third or fourth generation heirs of the two-fisted old so-and-so who founded the original line of ships or barks or schooners—or in a trust administered by some bank so that the young squirts can't spend it all on platinum-trimmed convertibles. The people who manage the ships and select their names may never have seen a ship before, and their ignorance of the niceties of maritime nomenclature is likely to be as great as their lack of knowledge of the traditions of the sea.
As the extreme clipper gave way to the post-Civil War windjammer, there was a trend toward the use of family names, which was perfectly all right. No one could take offense at Llewellyn J. Morse or B. P. Cheney carved in to the transom of one of those old down-easters. There was a bit of the same thing across the Atlantic, but not so much, and old-time British mariners still speak with great pride of their service in such ships as Celtic Monarch, Lord Shaftesbury or Sierra Leone—aswell as those with such relatively jaw-breaking names as Clackmannanshire or County of Linlithgow.
The problem of providing names for production-line ships is, admittedly, a big one—complicated when, for some obscure reason, one wishes to tie all the ships of the same line together with a common word or syllable. During World War I, the old U. S. Shipping Board picked the word "West" as a part of the name for all ships of one class, and "Lake" for another. From there on in, it became more involved, if we are to judge from such names as West Gotomska, West Humhaw, Lake Getaway and Lake Fandango. Do we hear laughter from the waterside pubs of Liverpool and South Shields? All right, chums-how about your own War Hindoo and War Nazam?
"Ah, yes," you will say, "but those names were chosen by a governmental bureau, where anything can happen!" Okay—so they were chosen by a governmental bureau. Let us then train our lorgnettes on some privately-named ships of then or then-abouts, and take a quick look down our noses at the Pure Woco Pep, at the Santacruzcement (which the lowly governmental agency which built her had named Eastern Victor) and at the Cities Service Kansas.
In World War II, the U. S. Maritime Commission must have sat down and taken a firm grip upon itself, before it selected names for its ships; by and large, the commission did an excellent and laudable job. The Liberty ships were given proper names; in one of the other classes they even revived the names of bygone clipper ships which had written maritime history, and the fine big T-2 tankers slid down the ways under the names of domestic battlefields, early trails, oil-producing areas and California missions; thus we got the Chancellorsville, Chisholm Trail, Antelope Hills and Mission Dolores. And although such a name as Fallen Timbers may look odd to the uninitiated, there are lots of people who will feel that it is more euphonious than, let us say, Esso Baton Rouge.
Why is it, by the way, that privately-owned tankers seem to be especially singled out for bizarre ideas in the matter of names? Why must these useful ships become floating sign-boards, bearing such legends as Esso Parkersburg (the government built her as the Fort Cornwallis), Cities Service Koolmotor or Sinclair Super flame? During the war, when tankers were going up in smoke and fire with grim regularity, it must have taken a man with more than ordinary courage to sign on in a vessel whose name ended with the word Superflame!
Out on the West Coast, tankers appear to be fairly free from this sort of thing. The reason never has been given, but those western tankers seem, as a matter of course, to be given names of areas connected with the oil industry, or names of the officials of the companies which run them. So your Pacific Coast tanker generally goes from port to port with some such name as Oleum, R. C. Stoner, Santa Paula or J. H. MacGaregill. California chambers of commerce seem quite willing to let the East Coast have the distinction of such names as Bulkcrude, Gulfwax or Amsterdam Socony.
Tugs, it seems, are getting that way, too. In bygone days, these stalwarts of sea and harbor traditionally bore such names as Defiance, Fearless, Storm King or Sea Lion. But times have changed, and today, up Halifax way, there lives a strong and beautiful tug, worthy of some such a title; her name is Foundation Mildred. This opens up a disturbing line of thought: Is she to be the first of a fleet of powerful ocean-going tugs which will ply the seas under such names as Girdle Mabel, Pantie Josephine and Bras Elizabeth? The thought is alarming, if anyone should slide down a backstay and in: quire.
In all justice, it should be remembered that England had been fighting a bitter and desperate war for some years before anyone else got into it, and the number of ships which the Ministry of War Transport sent to sea with names starting with the word "Empire" was astronomical; her ship-namers must have become very tired indeed. Still and all, it's a little difficult to work up any great amount of salty fervor for your dear old Alma Mater if she has a name like, let us say, Empire Chamois, Empire Joy or Empire Opossum. And the fine old American liner Congress (later the Nanking and later still the Emma Alexander), which ended her days under the Red Duster, finally went to Davey Jones with Empire Woodlark painted across her shapely stern. Egad, Throckmorton! That night the empire woodlarks warbled full mournfully in Nottingham Forest!
But who are we to point the finger of scorn? Lay that finger down, Babe—lay that finger down! Just don't forget our own Bon Air Seam, C.C.N.Y. Victory and Mormachawk, over which the battle of pronunciation still rages in the outports: Is it Mormack Hawk—or Morma Chalk? The dictionary won't help you.
Within certain definite limits, this business of having one common word in the name's of a whole fleet of ships can be all right; the Maritime Commission handled it nicely in the case of a bunch of their lovely little C-1 freighters, all of which were named after prominent headlands—Cape Hatteras, Cape Sable and the like. When they got around to the Victory class, however, the problem of finding words to go with "Victory" hit them right between the eyes. At first, they named them after our allies. We soon ran out of allies. Then they turned to American cities; in time this gave way to colleges, which gave us Duke Victory, Cooper Union Victory and alot of others. A lot of colleges and universities got left out in the cold, and all of them were not fresh-water colleges by any means. It probably still is a sore point with Old Grads—if they know about it—that there floats neither a Harvard Victory nor a Yale Victory; University of California and Stanford University—both moderately well known—also will go down in history as Victory-shipless universities.
The steel industry being in the steamship game in more ways than as a mere purveyor of plates and rivets, it is not surprising that American cargoes should be carried to the far ports of the world in a fleet of ships with such names as Steelmaker, Steel Inventor, Steel Artisan and Steel Architect. So far, so good—or at least, approximately so. They have not yet laid the keels for the freighters Steel Bookmaker or Steel Mortician, so we can relax for a while, anyhow.
Occasionally, there is a distinctly whimsical turn to this series-naming of vessels. Once upon a time there was a chap in San Francisco—so the story goes—who built a barge called Ajax. It was a very successful barge, so he built three others just like it. What to do for similar names? It was simple, and his fleet finally consisted of the Ajax, Bjax, Cjax and Djax.
Just as in the last reel of the old-time westerns, the cavalry would gallop across the silver screen to save the heroine from a fate worse than death, there are occasions in which some kindly soul will buy a ship—or a shipowner will get religion—and steps will be taken to rescue a ship from some outlandish name. Thus the Cities Service Koolmolor at long last became the California, the Glamorgan Seam became the Plymouth and the Pure Woco Pep wound up as the San Luis. The Navy got the Esso Annapolis and lost no time in renaming her Chemung. And once in a very great while someone who buys a ship with a nice name is content to leave it alone, even through a change of nationality. No change, for instance, was made in the name of the tanker Lundy's Lane—forwhich great credit is due her owners, Messrs. Hvalfangstelkappt Blaahval A/S, of Oslo.
There is an old tradition that changing a ship's name is bad luck, and leads to such things as sprung topmasts, six feet of water in the lazarette, and finding yourself on a lee shore in light and variable winds, with stiff new lines which are too big to render through the blocks. Sometimes, it can lead to things which are even worse. In the case of the tanker Hobkirk's Hill, for example, it led to her winding up as the Esso Den Haag. It caught the Mendocino aback, and now she's the P. & T . Seafarer. To the Lookout Mountain—a fine, ringing Civil War name if you ever heard one—it brought the odd monicker of Ampac California, whatever that means. It unloaded Stanvac Hongkong onto the luckless Black Hills. Today the Cape Alexander is the Agwimonte, the Cape Ann is the Alcoa Prospector—andthe Clifford F. Moll has become the Standard Portland Cement.
Where is it all going to end? Will science and what we laughingly call progress saddle us, some dark day, with ships' names in the form of singing commercials? Will we be forced, in time, to take our vacation cruise in a luxury-liner named Your Car Needs Zippoctane—andwhich will be assisted in docking by the tugs Kiddies Love Wheatsie-Popsies and Don't Miss the August Sales At Gish's?
Whither—if it does not violate security—are we drifting?
A graduate of the University of California, Commander MacMullen served briefly in the Army during World War I, joined the old Naval Militia of California, entered the Naval Reserve In 1935, and saw active duty from the spring of 1941 through 1945 and from early 1947 to date. He is at present attached to Headquarters, Eleventh Naval District. A free-lance writer for many years, he is author of two books: Paddle-Wheel Days in California and (with Jack McNairn) Ships of the Redwood Coast.