Horatio Hornblower’s HMS Indefatigable was named for a real ship, apparently (1784-1816), and at least six subsequent ships shared its name, most of them prior to CS Forester’s writing career.
A lot of these appear to be cases of simply re-using a ship’s name, rather than actually consciously naming the ship after the fictional original. I’m sure all the Argos are invoking the mythological original ship, but I doubt that most of the others cited – the Indefatigable, for instance, share that motivation. At the same time, I admit that it’s hard to show motivation. But it’s pretty clear to me that the Nautiluses that went under the Pole were conscious, as well as the Elon Musk ships gaffa named are. If someone ever names an actual spacecraft the Heart of Gold or the City of Chillocothe, that’ll likely be another case.
I hadn’t realized that Virgin Atlantic had its own VSS Enterprise. You could always argue that its name owes nothing to Captain Kirk’s starship, but with that double nacelle design you wouldn’t have an easy time convincing me
A Shortfall of Gravitas, the third one, is under construction.
Also from SpaceX: The Falcon 9 booster was named for the Millennium Falcon. The Dragon spacecraft is named for Puff the Magic Dragon.
It also allowed him to name the upcoming heavy lift vehicle the “Big Falcon Rocket” - which I think was the point.
Charon was the mythological Greek deity who ferried the dead across the river Styx.
HMS Charon has been used by the Royal Navy four times.
The SpaceX rule: “Names must be cool.”
a nice mythological tie-in, but there was no original ship Charon for the Royal Navy ships to be named after.
Long before there was SpaceX, the German Rocket Society was naming its rocket parts after the ones in Kurd Lasswitz’* early science fiction novel Zwei Planete (Two Planets), a novel about a very unequal war between the technologically advanced Martians and Earthmen. It came out the same year as Wells’ war of the Worlds.
*As a science fiction pioneer contemporary with Verne and Wells, Lasswitz deserves to be better known. But his novel Auf Zwei Planete has never even been fully translated, and only had one hardcover and one paperback publication. Willy Ley - a member of that German Rocket Society and a science popularize, translated three of his stories in the 1950s for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but only one of those got reprinted later. Another of his stories got translated in 2008, but his stuff is pretty well unknown to Americans. But it is one of the chief inspirations for the German gang that ultimately worked under von Braun.
I bet serving on a ship ferrying the dead to Hades was a plum assignment. :eek: Likewise on the jolly ships named Erebus, Terror, Tantalus, and Cerberus.
I really thought their next autonomous barge would be named either The Check Is In The Mail or I Promise I Won’t Come In Your Mouth.
Driving to work this morning there was a vehicle with a motorboat on a trailer stopped near me at the lights The boat was called the ‘Good Ship Venus’. I’m assuming the original in the poem was fictional.
I’m sure you’re right. And I’m also sure that there’s a vast number of small, personal craft that fit the OP’s requirements – you wouldn’t name an ocean liner “The Flying Dutchman”, but some guy will probably name his weekend motorboat that.
I suppose I should mention the SS Titan, the fictional title ship in the 1898 novella Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan. In the novella, the Titan struck an iceberg and sank with much loss of life. The vital statistics of the Titan, including the number of lifeboats (“as few as the law allowed”), are strikingly similar to another ship you may have heard of, which sunk in 1912…
Yeah, but it seems unlikely that they named the Titanic after that fictional ship. (“Gentlemen, I’m so sure that this ship is unsinkable that I’m going to name it after a fictional boat resembling it that sank disastrously, thereby tempting fate.”
“And then, since I’m so certain that my matter-transmitter will work perfectly, I will get into this transmission booth with a fly.”)
Wasn’t Charon pretty much indistinguishable from his boat? I can’t recall any myths or stories where he’s doing anything but ferrying the dead and occasionally the living, or refusing to because of no coin in the mouth. Also, I don’t believe his boat had a name. It was always Charon’s boat or Charon’s ferry.
Another not-quite one is Captain Hook’s ship, the Sea Devil. Both the Royal Navy and the US Navy had warships named Sea Devil. Of course that’s also the name of a manta ray species. But especially for the Royal Navy, it’s likely the namers were aware of the former fictional use.
The “HMS” Surprise is a real ship named after a fictional ship which was based on a real ship. Does that count?
There was a series of real HMS Surprises in the British Navy, including one around 1800. That actual one was used as the basis for the fictional HMS Surprise in Patrick O’Brians Aubrey-Maturin series. When the move Master and Commander was made, they filmed it using an existing actual ship the Rose (itself a replica of an 18th century HMS Rose). Later the Rose was formally re-named ‘HMS Surprise’ (despite it not actually being a British Navy ship).
That’s stretching it. “Charon’s Boat” is not equivalent to “Charon” by itself
Captain Hook’s ship was the Jolly Roger in Barrie. Disney used this, too, in its adaptations. It’s only in the Dave Barry/Ridley Pearson books that it’s the “Sea Devil”, and I’ll bet that post-dates most of those ships.
This guy’s subis named after the GOU Limiting Factor from “Player of Games”.
Proof: FAQ | Five Deeps Expedition
Clarke wrote that the ship in the movie was named after this particular ship, which he had admired and sometimes eaten lunch aboard: RRS Discovery - Wikipedia
I get the Hitchhiker’s reference, but not the second one (and did you mean “Chillicothe”?): USS Chillicothe - Wikipedia