Lady Vessel

"You tend to ride the brakes. Just imagine she's... she's a beautiful woman. A beautiful, beautiful woman, Sam."

— Dean Winchester talking about his car, Supernatural

Things used to transport people — whether they be common cars and boats, airplanes, or fantastical spaceships — are often treated as female by their owners and operators, up to giving them feminine names, if not directly naming them after a woman for sentimental or honorific purposes.

Ships, be they of the seagoing or the stargoing variety, are often but not always referred to as "she" in Western cultures. In this case not only is the ship referred to as she, but she is also named for a woman.

The explanations for why vessels are referred to as female vary widely, and there is no single agreed-upon explanation. They range from the fact that, in ancient times, ships were named for goddesses to appease them for safe passage, to referencing a vessel's womb-like shape and how she can "contain" or "cradle" her crew, to a ship being all decked out, showing her topsides and hiding her bottom etc., to the fact that rich men used to name their boats after their mistresses or wives. There's also the undeniable emotional attachment anthropomorphizing something that must otherwise be taken of by the very human (and mostly male) crew.

Another explanation is that, while Modern English does not use gendered nouns, Old English did, and the word for "ship" in Old English was feminine. Interestingly, in languages such as French, German, and Spanish that do use gendered nouns, the words for "boat" and "ship" would vary between masculine and feminine, depending on the language. "Car" is also generally a feminine noun whereas "airplane" and "spaceship" are generally masculine.

This may rarely overlap with Legacy Vessel Naming, since in those cases a newer vessel is specifically named after an older one that got destroyed, and generally the original vessel was named after a male political figure or war hero. On the other hand, ships with Living Figureheads are more likely to be treated as female, as the figureheads are almost Always Female.

See also I Call It "Vera", where a weapon is given a name. Compare with Spaceship Girl, where the ship is run by a female AI or construct and/or speaks with a female voice.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Queen Emeraldas: The title starship is named after her own captain. It is also completely crewless, except for said captain, and is run entirely by a sophisticated AI... whose voice and personality are also copied from Emeraldas', making her and her ship functionally the same being in two very differently sized bodies.

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: In one Archie comic, Archie acquires a boat. Predictably, he can't decide whether to name it after Betty or Veronica, so he Takes a Third Option and calls it the "Midge" instead. But then he realizes that Moose will probably beat him up for naming the boat after his girlfriend, so in the end he destroys the boat and uses it for firewood.

Film — Animated

• In Disney's Pocahontas, the Susan Constant is the ship that brings John Smith and the other settlers to North America. Truth in Television, as that was the name of the ship that brought Smith to the New World, although in real life she was accompanied by two other ships, the "Discovery" and the "Godspeed," which are Adapted Out.

Film — Live-Action

• Forrest Gump: When Forrest and Lt. Dan start up the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Forrest names all of his shrimping boats after Jenny, because he "can't think of a more beautiful name."
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Word of God states that Peter Quill named his Cool Starship the Milano after the actress Alyssa Milano, who was his childhood crush.
• It (2017): The beginning of the movie has Bill explain to his younger brother Georgie how boats were referred to by feminine pronouns, so they both agreed to do the same for their paper boat. This becomes important in the climax when Bill quickly realizes that IT is impersonating Georgie the moment he calls the boat "it" instead of "her".
• There are two films titled Memphis Belle, both based upon the Boeing B-17F "Flying Fortress" with the same name that conducted and survived 25 bombing missions during World War II. One is a 1944 documentary with plenty of wartime footage and historical accuracy, while the other is a 1990 wartime drama film that embellishes some of the plane's circumstances.
• Pacific Rim: Gipsy Danger, and her successor in the sequel Gipsy Avenger, are both referred to with feminine pronouns to complement their relatively feminine shapes. They're outright called Action Girls in their respective character pages.
• Yolki: Captain Zemlyanikin's plane is called Yulia Snegiryova after his Old Flame (and eventual New Old Flame and wife).

Literature

• Animorphs: The Beginning: While hijacking a Yeerk cruiser captured by the Andalite navy during the final battle of the war, the Animorphs' Andalite ally Menderash mentions an Andalite custom that they never board a ship before it's christened, reasoning that once they know who the ship is, they can begin to discover who the crew is. The Animorphs in turn tell him that for humans, a ship is always a she, not an it. They then name the vessel after their fallen teammate Rachel.
• Anno Dracula and Diogenes Club series: Edwin Winthrop has a private plane named Katie after an old girlfriend.
• Because A Little Bug Went Kerchoo has a boat called the Mary Lou.
• Mary Ellen Taylor's The Brighter the Light features a showboat named the Maisy Adams.
• Broken Angels: The Martian warship whose discovery and claim provide most of the impetus for the plot of the novel is ultimately named the Tanya Wardani, after the archaeologist who opened the interstellar gate that allowed access to it.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Mr. Pott calls the eponymous car "she", confusing the kids since it is a car. He explains that vehicles often get called "she", even a ship he once sailed on that was named after a king.
• Christine: A 1958 Plymouth Fury that takes on a life of its own, plus a psychotic fixation on its newest owner, Arnie Cunningham. Arnie dubbed his car Christine, and the vehicle intends to have Arnie all to herself, all others being expendable.
• The Deathworlders series: Examples where ships are named after important female figures from history and mythology:
  • The first faster-than-light capable vehicle built by humanity is named "Pandora", after the first woman of Greek mythology. Though Pandora first appears in Chapter 6, Pilot Rylee Jackson discusses the importance of the name with her Gaoian friend Niral in Chapter 12:
    "Does the name mean anything special?"...
    Rylee smiled. "Pandora was the first woman, according to Greek mythology."
    "The...how can there be a first woman? And what's a Greek? One of your clans?"
    "Yeah, sort of. Mythology means kind of, fanciful stories, an entertaining way of getting points across using fiction. It doesn't always have to be scientifically accurate. Besides, they didn't really understand evolution by natural selection back in ancient Greece. It's a very old story.
    "Oh. So, your first warp craft is named to honour the first female and not the first male?" The idea seemed to have Niral's approval, and not for the first time Rylee was struck by the notion that Gaoian females were maybe a bit sexist.
    "Well, she was more than just the first woman." Rylee said, beginning to pack up her cot and stow it away in the ship's small cargo compartment. "She was a curious soul who opened a box in which Zeus, the father of the gods, had sealed away all the evils and negativity of mankind. When they all flew away to plague humanity, the only thing that was left behind was hope, which she kept."
  • Although Pandora is a prototype Lockheed TS-101, pilot Rylee Jackson and her ship are eventually incorporated into the first wing of superluminal military vehicles. All the ships are named after women from Greek mythology: Pandora, Ariadne, Niobe, Medea, Electra, and Danae — collectively the "Odyssey Wing".
  • In chapter 12, according to the alien Niral, "The first Gaoian warp craft was named Tiritya, after the first Mother-Supreme, who united the females of all clans into one clan.
• Discworld
  • In Jingo, Lord Vetinari points out that Ankh-Morpork hasn't had a navy since the sinking of the Lady Jane.
  • In Snuff, the ox-powered paddleboats on the Quire include the Roberta E. Biscuit and the Wonderful Fanny. Commander Vimes realises that the captain of the latter is probably married to a woman named Francesca he's very proud of, just in time to avoid sniggering. Corporal Nobbs doesn't.
  • Iron Girder, the Disc's first steam locomotive in Raising Steam, is frequently referred to by female pronouns by those who ride her, work on her, and especially her inventor. By the end of the book she's become a kind of goddess.
• Foundation and Earth: Golan Trevize has to actively forbid himself from thinking of his starship, the Far Star, as female. It is a ship, but a wonderful, easygoing, delightful ship....
• Hellspark: The protagonist Tocohl owns a ship named Margaret, Lord Lynn. It's never explained who the original was, or why she was Lord Lynn instead of Lady Lynn.
• Honor Harrington:
  • The GNS Honor Harrington is named for Admiral Honor Harrington. She is captured by Haven, and Manticore and Grayson receive footage of her execution The execution was staged and Honor later escapes from the prison planet along with the entire population of POWs. Regardless, the Graysons keep the name.
  • Other ships named after women in the Honor Harrington universe include the HMS Madelyn Hoffman and the HMS Queen Caitrin, a heavy cruiser and a superdreadnought, respectively, and both part of the Royal Manticoran Navy fleet.
• Linnea Sinclair's Paranormal Romance Hope's Folly: The eponymous starship was named for the original owner's dead daughter (and her cat, Folly).
• Jo's Boys: Sailor Emil jokes that when he gets his first command he will name it The Jolly Jo after his aunt.
• The Patricia Fisher mystery series by Steve Higgs takes place largely aboard a luxury cruise liner called the Aurelia.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Kronos and his army stay on a cruise ship called the Princess Andromeda. It has a figurehead that shows a screaming lady chained to the ship, referencing a Greek myth in which she was chained to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster.
• Redwall: In The Legend of Luke, after Luke fights off a pirate crew and seizes their ship, he renames the latter Sayna, after his wife who was recently murdered by another group of pirates.
• Rod Allbright Alien Adventures: In Aliens Stole My Body, Rod spends some time on his long-lost father's personal ship, the Jean. As Rod notes, Art had named it after his wife, Rod's mother.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Many ships are named after women, most notably:
  • Alyn "Oakenfist" Velaryon calls his flagship Queen Rhaenys. Officially, there's only one Queen Rhaenys in Westerosi history — one of the three Targaryen conquerors; however, there is some ambiguity since it's possible the ship could be named after Alyn's grandmother (most likely his stepmother) Princess Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was.
  • Robert Baratheon names a ship Lady Lyanna for his deceased fiancée, Lyanna Stark.
  • Davos Seaworth captains a ship named Black Betha, named after the late queen Betha Blackwood. A ship named after his wife, Lady Marya, is captained by his son Allard. Sadly both ships are destroyed during the Battle of Blackwater.
  • Cersei Lannister orders a new fleet of ships built in the fourth book, among them Sweet Cersei named after herself; Princess Myrcella named after her daughter; Lady Joanna named after her mother; Queen Margaery named after her daughter-in-law; and Lady Olenna named after Margaery's grandmother.
• Star Trek Expanded Universe:
  • The novel Battlestations! has James Kirk as the owner of a schooner called the Edith Keeler, named after the woman he fell in love with in "City on the Edge of Forever".
  • Played with in the novel Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan. Dr. Wilson's ship is named after James Barry, the 19th-century British surgeon who was discovered on his death to be a woman. This turns out to be a hint that Dr. Wilson is also not who she presents herself to be.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Mara Jade captains a series of ships named after herself beginning with the Jade's Fire, which she acquires in the short story 'Jade Solitaire'. In Vision of the Future she intentionally crashes the Fire into a Chiss fortress. Luke Skywalker gives her the shuttle Jade Sabre as a wedding present to replace it, which she uses from Survivor's Quest until it is destroyed on the ground on Dantooine in The New Jedi Order: Dark Tide I — Onslaught. Lando and Tendra Calrissian gift her the yacht Jade Shadow as a replacement.
  • The Han Solo Trilogy: The Hutt Gambit has Han acquiring his first starship, which he names the Bria, after the girl he fell for in the first book. A sweet gesture, but it's no Millennium Falcon as it quickly proves to be The Alleged Starship, having problems every other day, and generally making its owner miserable. In an odd twist of fate, this actually comes back around when the actual Bria, along with Lando Calrissian, gets captured by Boba Fett. Shortly after the starliner they're on gets attacked by pirates, whom Lando realizes are acquaintances of his and Han's. he manages to convince the pirate leader to help them by telling her the woman he's with is Bria, "As in Han's ship? That Bria?"
• A notable inversion occurs in The Wheel of Time, where the Sea Folk always consider their ships male. Their justification for this sounds a lot like the reasoning real-life sailors give for them being female, i.e. they ascribe personality traits to the vessel that they consider appropriate to that gender. The fact that the gender assignation is so easily flipped ties in with the series-long Running Gag about the not-so-different Mars and Venus Gender Contrast.

Live-Action TV

• Airwolf: Flight instructor and Ace Pilot Dominic Santini is fond of referring to the tricked-out Bell 222A helicopter as "the Lady." He'll even talk to it lovingly when he's at the controls.
• Cheers: Robin Colcord has a yacht called the Rebecca. However, it was actually named after the biblical Rebecca and not his girlfriend Rebecca Howe. (He had it christened before they started dating.)
• Doctor Who:
  • The First Doctor always referred to the TARDIS with female pronouns. This comes and goes with later Doctors, but is notable in the new series, where it reaches the point of Cargo Ship, culminating with the episode "The Doctor's Wife".
  • In the episode "The Girl In the Fireplace", clockwork automatons are trying to repair a damaged ship using human parts. The last part they need is a brain to fix the main computer, and this brain can apparently only come from Madame Du Pompadour. The automatons open time windows between the ship and wherever she happens to be at the moment, constantly checking throughout her life to see if she's "ready." Turns out in the end, the ship was named the Madame Du Pompadour, and the automatons thought they needed to wait until the real person was the same age as the ship itself.
• Horatio Hornblower series: Ships commanded by Captain Hornblower include: Atropos named after the mythological figure, Witch of Endor named after the biblical figure, and Lydia apparently a generic woman's name, rather than being named after a specific woman.
• NCIS: Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs does two things: work and build boats in his basement. He names every boat after an important woman from his past, including, most poignantly, his deceased daughter, Kelly.
• The Pretender episode 'Every Picture Tells a Story': Roy Abbot lives on a boat named after The One That Got Away.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • Captain Kirk often describes the Enterprise as being a woman, sometimes as the only woman he can have a long-term relationship with.
    • In "I, Mudd", Kirk refers to the Enterprise (a spaceship) as a "beautiful lady", confusing Alice the android.
    • Scotty often describes the Enterprise as his daughter.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: In the pilot episode "Encounter At Farpoint", Admiral Leonard "Bones" McCoy gives Data a piece of advice about the brand-spanking new Enterprise-D: "You treat her like a lady... and she'll always bring you home."
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • In "Alice", Tom Paris names his new shuttlecraft "Alice", after a woman he had a crush on at school when they were teens because she was a "lost cause" (as in no chance of dating her) and it was so broken that people thought it was a lost cause.
    • Voyager itself is also often referred to with feminine pronouns, especially by Janeway.
• Stranger Things episode "Papa": Yuri introduces the party in Russia to his helicopter which he named Katinka after his first lover who had a "very beautiful, very round buttocks" much like the shape of the heli's cabin.
• Supernatural: Dean treats his car, affectionately known as "Baby", as if it were a living woman. He almost always refers to the car with feminine pronouns, and even chastises others for not handling the car with care — comparing it to how one should treat a lady.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In the episode "Passage on the Lady Anne", the Lady Anne is an ocean liner on a trip from New York to Southampton, England.
• The Wishing Chair: One of Peter and Mollie's misadventures sees them boarding a magic ship coincidentally named The Mollie, much to Mollie's delight — especially since the Captain is a total stranger to the two kids.

Music

• Billy Joel's song "The Downeaster Alexa" is about the decline of the fishing industry in New England. The boat in the song is actually named for Joel's real-life daughter Alexa Joel.

Puppet Shows

• Sesame Street: One cartoon skit features a shipwreck called Mary Lou.

Video Games

• Divinity: Original Sin II: The Lady Vengeance is constructed out of Livewood, playing host to the soul of a female elf; she is, essentially, alive and can communicate using her dragon head-like figurehead.
• Escape from Monkey Island: Guybrush sails The Dainty Lady around the Caribbean to search for the components to make an Ultimate Insult talisman. The figurehead at the front is of an actual lady, and can be brought to life with voodoo — but she turns out not to be dainty at all, having a bad attitude and a violent temper.
• Fortnite: Midas' private yacht is named "The Marigold", after his female counterpart of the same name. She's a bit surprised to find out he did that.
  Marigold: I can't believe you named a boat after me.
• Kantai Collection: Inverted where the ships aren't being given feminine names — rather, they ARE girls. A few of them do have feminine names, though, like Fubuki, Suzuya or Katsuragi.
• Love & Pies: Esme's van, which had its brakes sabotaged by an unknown villain, causing it to crash into the back of Amelia's café, is named Grizelda. Amelia has it repurposed into a pizza truck as part of her project to rebuild the café.

Web Original

• Brig Scarlet Flamingo:
  • Louis de Geriese's yacht is called Marceline Julie after his late wife.
  • Some prominent ships of the Walsian navy are named after female royals; among these are the Princess Vivian (named after the current heiress to the throne) and the Dowager Queen Dorothea (named after a well-loved queen who lived many decades ago).

Western Animation

• Classic Disney Shorts: In "Boat Builders", Mickey, Donald and Goofy build a ship that they call the Queen Minnie (after Minnie Mouse, of course).
• The Dragon Prince: Captain Villads named his ship Ruthless, after his wife Ruth who tragically doesn't like sailing.
• The Great North: Beef's fishing boat is named The Mighty Kathleen after his ex-wife.
• Varrick from The Legend of Korra named a battleship after his female assistant, Zhu Li, since "they're both cold, heartless war machines".
• The Little Rascals: The steamboat in "Cap'n Spanky's Showboat" is called the Mississippi Queen.
• Mike, Lu & Og: The ship that brought the natives' ancestors to the island was called the Good Ship Betty Anne.
• The Simpsons: In "Let's Go Fly a Coot", a group of Air Force veterans from World War II arrive in a B-17 named "Lulu".
  Lisa: Why are planes and boats always women?
  Ridley: Because they require a lot of upkeep and a firm hand at the controls.
  Lisa: I knew there'd be a sexist joke behind it. I knew it!
• Thomas and the Magic Railroad: Thomas's Love Interest is a train named Lady.

Real Life

• The Other Wiki has a list of vessels associated with the U.S. military that are named after women. Some notable examples include the USS Lady Washington, named for George Washington's wife Martha, the first First Lady of the United States, and the USS Hopper, named for Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, a pioneering computer scientist and naval officer.
• Admiral Chester W. Nimitz once said, "A ship is always referred to as 'she' because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder."
• John F. Kennedy owned a Convair 240 which he named Caroline after his daughter, who was two when he acquired it in 1959.
• Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress used by the United States military to drop the first of two atomic bombs on Japan, on the 6th of August 1945. The plane was named for the pilot's mother. It should be noted that the pilot chose the name while the B-29 was still being built and well before he knew specifically what it would be used for.
• The Netherlands' national airline KLM's fleet of McDonnell Douglas MD-11s were named after prominent women. A few examples include the Audrey Hepburn, the Marie Curie, and the Florence Nightingale.
• National Airlines, a former U.S.-based airline, gave all their planes female names such as "Susan", "Mary", "Patricia", etc. This caused a bit of an uproar from Moral Guardians when National rolled out a new advertising campaign featuring flight attendants with the same name saying "I'm [Name]. Fly me."
• Henry VIII's favorite ship in his fleet was the Mary Rose, which served for nearly his entire reign. It sank in 1545 but, more than 400 years later, was finally located and raised; today, the rescued parts are on public display in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, England.
• Ernest Hemingway named his fishing boat Pilar after his wife Pauline's nickname.
• Blackbeard named his vessel the Queen Anne's Revenge, either to show support to the Queen Anne or as his way of reminiscing about the War of the Spanish Succession, which in the American colonies was called "Queen Anne's War."
• The Susan Constant was the largest ship to carry colonists to the Virginia Colony on their 1606-1607 crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The colonists would go on to found Jamestown, which would later become one of the earliest permanent English settlements on the North American continent. It is unclear whether the ship was named after a specific woman or just given a female name.

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