I’ve started reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, and I’m baffled and bemused by some of the names given to His Majesty’s ships.
Names like Victory and Indefatigable I can understand–at least they’re warlike concepts (although it would be nice to settle on nouns vs. adjectives). But Surprise ? Sophie ? Polychrest ? What the hell…?
So was there any standard for how ships were named during the Napoleonic Wars? And is there now?
Try this
http://www.downport.com/freelancetraveller/features/shipyard/naming.html
There have been some pretty odd names, especially in the 18thC and some unwieldy ones during the Victorian era.
There tends to be a large number of classical referances, Echo, Achilles, Poseidon etc and as you get to more recent times the names become more mundane, like naming after villages, towns, weapons and the like.
During WWII developments of warships was so rapid as was construction that this meant lots of differant warship variants with lots of individuals within each type, hence themes were selected with large numbers of names within each, so there were some named after flowers, such as Chrysanthemum, birds like Wild Swan etc.
As you get to more important vessels then grander and more individualistic names are assigned, so you get the colony class cruisers such as Jamaica, Ceylon, etc, followed by another types named after UK counties, and major cities, right through to capitol ships named after, well anything deemed dignified and impressive.
Some names have a long history, Ark Royal, Duke of York, Queen Elizabeth.
One thing that seems to hold though is that when a ship has suffered a disastrous loss, particularly capital ships, the name is retired, hence no more Hood, Barham, Great Harry but even this rule is not always followed, since Repulse and Renown are both fine old names with losses in the line of battle and yet are still used.
Heck, the UK’s not alone with strange names for a warship. The USS Carl Vinson was named after a politician in the hopes of getting his support behind building the thing. It worked.
I remember that corvettes which did escort duty for the vital supply convoys in WWII were named after flowers from what I thought was called the Queen’s Garden. However, a Google search leads me to believe that such a thing did not exist prior to the 1950s. If anyone can help me out on that one, I’d appreciate it.
As far as the naming conventions of the Napoleonic wars, according to O’Brian a warship which was taken as a prize could be named by its captor. In one of his novels, he recounts the story of one cynical captain who named a ship after a contemporary expletive, which I cannot now recall. Made me chuckle at the time, though.