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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
Anime
- Particularly abundant in the Leijiverse—the anachronistic vehicles are partially what give the shows their charm.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sol Bianca revolves around a space "submarine", which "dives" and "surfaces" to enter and leave its cloaking effect.
Comic Books
- This
 article is about a wooden-hulled starship from a Star Wars comic.
Film
- Disney's Treasure Planet takes this to the extreme, with a 70/30 blend of 18th century ships combined with technology. It works quite well.
- WALL-E featured the Axiom, a "Starliner" with a design evoking that of a sea-going cruise ship.
- The Fhloston Paradise hotel in The Fifth Element actually does double as both a space and sea vessel. The steamstacks, however, may be just for show.
- There is a B-Movie called Message From Space, which has this very thing, but takes it to the extreme. These space sailers are wooden Renaissance-era ships! Oh, and it also includes Humungous Mecha, Planet Looters, Space Pirates, and even a planet with rocket engines!
Literature
- In John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor's Into The Lookingglass series, the Human-Adar Alliance's first warp ship is a converted Ohio class ballistic missile 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 alchemical engines.
Live Action TV
- Doctor Who has not only the new series Christmas Episode "The Voyage of the Damned", one of the aforementioned Space Titanics, but also the 1983 Fifth Doctor serial "Enlightenment", where he and his companions find themselves on board a Sufficiently Advanced Alien Edwardian ship in space, powered via solar sails, which is participating in a race around the planets.
- With other such ships from different periods from human history, including a Greek trireme...with rowers.
- And a scene or two where the Doctor and companions went for a stroll on the deck.
- All justifiable (perhaps) in that the crews of said ships were basically hyper-advanced aliens who were playing at a game (albeit one with major stakes) - in essence, they could afford to waste the time, effort, energy, and technology necessarily to make such ridiculous ships possible (and even effective) solely to fulfill their own sense of the Rule Of Cool. Basically, they're the ultra-high tech future version of the SCA.
- There was also 6th Doctor flash-forward story "Terror of the Vervoids" (during the Trial of a Timelord season) where the Doctor and new companion Mel (who he hadn't met yet) landed on board the star cruiser Hyperion, a giant ocean liner that is almost sucked into a black hole at one point.
- The Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Explorers" involves Captain Sisko playing Thor Heyerdahl in a solar sailer.
- A female character had such a ship in Message From Space: Galactic Battle (this editor doesn't know her English name).
- Star Fleet gives us the Skull, a space going pirate ship complete with sails.
Tabletop Games
- 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.
- The Eldar of Warhammer 40000's ships use 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.
- GURPS: Spaceships discusses solar sails. You can even give space boats wooden hulls if the setting demands it or the characters are incredibly desperate.
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.
Video Games
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.
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