Dauntless wrote:don't the Russians and Chinese use HE as the pronoun of choice for their ships?
Some cultures do indeed attribute male names to ships as is covered in one of the initial sites that I linked.
Point being, we humans are adamant about attributing animate status and personaility to these organized hulks of bulking metal, as we did when we were lonely and oftentimes frightened little children with our teddy bears.
All emanating from the mind of a man whose perception of the world is greatly influenced by a psychologist of a sister.
In the very olden days when the practice started, I can understand masculine names given to ships, being that a man was considered to be the most powerful of the sexes. Indeed, man was considered to represent the only power between the sexes. Why attribute such weakness to a vessel as the vessel of a woman?
Especially if considered that at one point, women were not even allowed onto ships at sea. Unless she was butt butterball naked. Why?*. . .
It's been years since I've actively studied anything related to the Age of Sail but once a fangirl, always a fangirl, I suppose. So, to answer your question, women were considered bad luck on ships because they were believed to be too physically inferior to be of any use in actually sailing the vessel while also distracting the men on board and leading them into acts of vice. If the men were distracted from their duty to the ship in this way and therefore failed to sail the vessel properly, it would anger the stormy sea gods who would then punish the entire ship with rough seas and bad weather, possibly even causing the ship to sink with all hands on board.
Such beliefs often had dire consequences for women aboard ships at sea. In 1379, Sir John Arundel set out for sea in support of the duke of Brittany but stopped on the way to violate a convent of nuns, even allowing some of his men to take some of these women with them out to sea. The fleet ran into heavy storms off the coast of Cornwall, though, and thinking that it was the fault of the women on board, the crew threw them overboard. (See, The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376-1422), ed. and trans. by James G. Clark and David Preest (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 96-99)
Yet, paradoxically, women were believed to be the best navigators and the presence of a naked woman was thought to be good luck at sea, hence why a number of ships' figureheads were bare-breasted female figures. It was thought that her open eyes would lead the ship to her destination while her bare breasts would shame the sea gods into calm. This effect of female nudity over nature was recorded by Pliny in his encyclopedic Natural History (Book 28, Ch 2) where he wrote that a menstruating woman who uncovers her body has the ability to scare away hailstorms, whirlwinds and lightning. If she walks naked around the field, caterpillars, worms, and beetles will fall off the ears of corn. And, even when not menstruating, a woman can still lull a storm out at sea by stripping down to nothing.
* There are 13 very superstitious sailor superstitions.
Several superstitions bearing particular interest to the Honorverse. . .
1. Women are good at navigating. We've seen support of this in the Honorvere as well. LOL
2. Naked women are welcome.
3. Bad luck to kill an Albatross. Seems like any fleet should have ships bearing this name.
4. Bad luck to have Sharks following you. The MA will agree.
Ginger Lewis goes a long way in dispelling the superstition that Gingers, red heads, should be avoided.
Honor Harrington is a double edged sword when it comes down to dispelling the superstition about women being unlucky aboard ship. Although very lucky to her crew, she is very unlucky to the enemy.
I wonder if Grayson used the old superstition that it's bad luck to change the name of a ship in defense of Honor's bitching about the Harringtons. LOL
Closing this out, American males love giving feminine names to our cars, "Isn't she a beaut?"
Though I had a female friend in college who referred to her old heap as Teddy. Because he was as tattered and torn and as reliable as her old teddy bear.