As has been established,
Space Is An Ocean, and in fiction, naval and maritime terms are often applied to spaceships. Some works, however, take things further, and make their characters go
Space Sailing on literal ships
IN SPACE! The reason for this? The
Rule Of Cool, and nothing else.
While, in
Real Life, there are proposals for spacecraft with solar sails, this isn't
Truth In Television, because they'd still be just spacecraft-with-sails; these are literal
boats in space, with all the shape and features that implies.
A subtrope of this is the idea of a space Titanic, an oddly common meme.
Interestingly, they don't go after
Space Whales as often as you might think. They are quite likely to house
Space Pirates, though.
Examples:
Film
Literature
- In John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor's Vorpal Blade and its sequal, Manxome Foe, the Human-Adar Alliance's first warp ship is a converted Ohio class submarine. The Adar, upon learning the origin of some of the terms used in the first book of the series (Into The Looking Glass), decide the ship must be named the Alliance Space Ship Vorpal Blade, much to the chagrin of all the humans who know about it.
- In Philip Reeve's Larklight novels, the star ships are nothing more than Victorian sailing vessels with [[Magitek alchemical]] engines.
Live Action TV
Anime
- Uchuu Senkan Yamato takes place aboard a risen-from-the seas and retrofitted-for-space World War II battleship Yamato.
- The So Bad Its Horrible anime Odin: Photon Space Sailor Starlight begins with a scene showing lots of futuristic ships plying the spaceways -- then brings on its master stroke, a new, better space ship, which is... a wooden sailing ship, complete with decks and rigging and masts and such.
- Space Carrier Blue Noah, AKA Thundersub.
- Captain Harlock has both Space Sailing and Space Trains!
- The Hyper Galaxy Dai-Gurren from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann looks much like a HUGE aircraft carrier.
- Had TOEI Animation accepted the Toon Makers bid for remaking Sailor Moon (in the infamous "Saban Moon"), instead of DiC's dubbing, Americans would have gotten the Sailor Senshi battling evil by going sailing in space... on space-windsurfers... involving fights with such ships. Let us all be glad it was scrapped for an anime Macekre, for once.
Western Animation
- Futurama, the Space Titanic episode "A Flight to Remember". Also, a Dark Matter Tanker appears in "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz" and a Pirate ship at the beginning of "Godfellas".
- Duck Dodgers featured a spaceship designed to look like an eighteenth-century pirate ship assaulting a spaceship designed to look like a nineteenth-century cruise liner. Also, the Klunkian (not Klingon) warship resembles a Viking longship, complete with oars.
Video Games
Tabletop RPGs
- This was the whole point of the Dungeons And Dragons Spelljammer setting. In this case, it wasn't interstellar space so much as interplanar space.
- Actually technically speaking Spelljammer took place on the same plane, the Prime Material. But nevermind.
- The Eldar of Warhammer 40000's ships utilize solar sails for propulsion...which means that if you play as them in the space combat spin-off, Battlefleet Gothic, you'll have to keep track of which side of the table is sunward and adjust your movement rates accordingly.
Webcomics
- The "Oceans Unmoving" storyline in Sluggy Freelance. This one wasn't space either, but flying sailing ships in a place outside time itself, which sailed above the frozen oceans of the title.
Comic Books
- This
article is about a wooden-hulled starship from a Star Wars comic.
