I’ve noticed recently while watching Battlestar Galactica that people usually refer to “the Galactica” and “the Pegasus,” although I think sometimes characters leave off the “the”. Conversely, I noticed while watching Star Trek II yesterday that characters tended not to use the “the” (for instance, Spock noting that “Reliant is closing” as they approached the nebula, or Joachim insisting “Enterprise will wait! She’s not going anywhere!”
The former is a (minor) pet peeve of mine. It just sounds wrong to my ear to preface a ship’s name with “the” when referring to the ship (e.g. saying “the Titanic” rather than simply “Titanic.”)
Also, why is it that some ship names don’t seem to lend themselves to the use of a “the”? I don’t think anyone ever called Mal’s ship “the Serenity.”
Ah, thanks for that. And, although I’m in favor of no “the” at all, I still wonder why “the Enterprise” or “the Galactica” sounds less wrong than “the Serenity.”
Perhaps it’s a US/UK English thing, but all ships I’ve heard referred to have been preceded either by “The” or a prefix - “RMS”, “SS”, “HMS”, “USS”, or whatever. (Note that I’m from a seafaring family.)
Yachts and dinghies, however, are somewhat more anthropomorphised over here.
Many ships are named after people, so we use “the” as a means of distinguishing between the ship and the person. "The crew of the Winston S. Churchill recently captured a Somali pirate ship"is much easier to understand than “The crew of Winston S. Churchill recently captured a Somali pirate ship”. The second sentence makes it sound as though A British Prime Minister has risen from the dead and now leads crews of pirate hunters. We extend the use of “the” to ship not named after people because it’s much easier to have standard conventions of speech.
If you really want something to think about, ask yourself why we always refer to a ship as “she”, even when it’s named after a man.
On TNG and DS9, they always referred to The Enterprise and The Defiant. Then on Voyager, they started calling the ship just “Voyager” which is one of the reasons that Voyager sucks so much. They did the same thing on Enterprise.
I’m much more used to hearing “the” before a ship’s name: the Arizona, the Forrestal, the Normandie, the France, the Queen Elizabeth, the United States, the Lusitania, the Constitution, the Constellation, the Bonnehomme Richard, the Philadelphia, the Monitor, the Virginia, the Merrimack, the Maine, the Hood, the Graf Spee, the Bismark, the Tirpitz, the Summasalt, etc.
“Serenity” insisted on not using “the,” but that was unusual, as indicated by the fact Inara had to correct the person who used it.
Hm. I’m thinking back to the last time I can remember really hearing about a boat and the only notable thing I’m coming up with is the bombing of the USS Cole. In all the reports I remember reading it was always the USS Cole, not just USS Cole - the latter, to my ears, sounds very wrong. If you break it down grammatically, don’t you need the article there?
Any typos/incoherency is the result of having been breathing in plaster dust all day. Remember: ‘minor’ renovation work in a really old house isn’t.
I’d like to see a Navy or ex-Navy person in here – Mr. Moto, maybe? I’ve seen military history type writing that omits the article. ISTR that in Navy docs and dispatches (and perhaps in oral communications) ships are always referred to without the article, but typically in italics where the the medium permits it.
In normal civilian discourse, I almost always see or hear “the,” so it doesn’t strike me as odd at all. In fact, oral communication sounds odd to me without it.
Because ‘serenity’ is an abstract noun, and they typically, unless modified, sound odd with the article. Think of the love, the courage, and compare that with the greatest love of all. Ah…teach them well and let them lead the way, remember all the beauty you possess inside. There…it’s happening again.
This might also be because things like Navy dispatches would be composed with brevity in mind (and of course, the armed forces have their own internal rules for consistant and uniform styles in written communications). Also, at some point in the past, these dispatches would have been sent via Morse Code, so leaving out “the” before “Enterprise” would make sense in that context.
Of course, on Star Trek, “The” is REQUIRED before saying “Enterprise”. Because it’s The Enterprise! (said with a dramatic sense of wonder, of course, as the director cuts to a beauty shot of the Enterprise flying into battle with the theme song blazing… sigh)
On Firefly, Serenity is refered to without an article for the same reason you don’t talk about The Malcolm Reynolds or The Simon Tam, it’s the name of a character (though the other characters are not necessarily concious of it most of the time).
From what I can recall of my various watchings of stuff where characters were based on ships (mostly sci-fi), leaving off the “The” before a ship’s spoken name usually implies a sense of urgency to the statement: (ie: Galactica is under attack!" or "We have to get her back to Excalibur!).
I’m ex-Navy too. Most of the time I always said the the. It depends on the name of the ship as well. One of my ships was the USS Detroit. It sounds funny if you don’t use the article. Now for USS Kitty Hawk, it rolls off the tounge either way.
I think context is what’s important. In the above example, the definite article is necessary. But in deep space battles, you can be pretty sure when you say “Reliant is closing”, nobody is going to shoot back at you with “Reliant who” or which Reliant?" If they did, then I guess you’d have to respond with a clarifier: “The Reliant. Sorry, I should have said The Reliant”.
So when it’s clear that you are speaking about the one and only, you can leave out the definite article.