# So what was a 'good' ship, and are there any others?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-a-good-ship-and-are-there-any-others/721536>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 3, 2015, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-a-good-ship-and-are-there-any-others/721536 "2015-06-03T14:39:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-a-good-ship-and-are-there-any-others/721536/21 "2015-06-05T01:24:13Z")

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“The good ship” appears in W.S. Gilbert’s The Yarn of the _Nancy Bell_ from 1866. (That ship also sank early in the poem.)

The OED simply lists it as a “conventional epithet” with examples going back as far as 1340, but no further explanation.

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