# Writers: Fictional ships you've named? (The sequel) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 23, 2016, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650 "2016-07-23T03:17:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/1 "2016-07-23T03:17:41Z")
Quite awhile back, I started a thread asking [what other writers around here had named fictional ships and vessels.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=533451) Well, it’s been a few years, and I’m curious again—there’s surely been ample creative work done in the intervening period, new faces have joined us, people might have missed the original, etc. So, I thought the time might just be ripe to revisit the subject. So, I’m asking again…for those writers here who’ve created fictional ships, what have you named them? Marine vessels, airships, and space/star ships all count. As for myself, I’m afraid, the only one that immediately comes to mind is from an online alternate history story I’ve collaborated a bit on, and is a simple renaming…the IJN’s carrier _Akagi_, sold to a foreign navy in the early 1940s (under somewhat exotic circumstances), and now serving as the HMAS _Newcastle_. Ba-dum-bum. Anyone else? ---
**Author:** ![stillownedbysetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/41988e/32.png) [@stillownedbysetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stillownedbysetters)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/2 "2016-07-23T03:51:13Z")
I’ve only once written a short story that contained a vessel. It was a sail boat, and I named it Easy To Slip after one of my favorite Little Feat songs. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/3 "2016-07-23T03:54:46Z")
I’m fond of Renaissance music, especially the English “nymphs and shepherds” cycle, so, in some of my starships and empires SF, I’ve had ships with names like “Philomela,” “Fair Phyllis,” “Daphne,” and the like. I had two fighter-carriers named “Tegula” and “Later” – Latin for “bricks and mortar.” In a role-playing-game, a friend of mine named her Free Trader starship “Penny Lane,” after the Beatles song. When I wrote up the game as a story, I changed this to “Coinroader.” I also invented a fictional Trafalgar-class British nuclear submarine, and named it the Tobruk. In the same book, there was a fictional Italian destroyer named Lago di Garda. It’s a mighty fun game to play! ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/4 "2016-07-23T04:50:13Z")
A multiverse-travelling ship called the Copenhagen. A seaship captained by a vampire and carrying her mortal lover called the Pale Heart. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/5 "2016-07-23T05:31:29Z")
The current book has a schooner called the _Brazenface_. Besides being too 18th-century to resist, it’s listed as a synonym of _Adventuress_, the real-life schooner that inspired it. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/6 "2016-07-23T06:03:35Z")
Nothing particularly clever, but a recent fantasy game I wrote featured several sailing ships: The _Magister_, an exploration/research vessel that was being converted to a function as a submarine by the shipwrights and mages of a sunken city. The _Otter_, a trading ship captained and crewed by wererats. The _Skrag_, a pirate ship. (A play on sea trolls and “scragging” the pirates’ victims.) ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/7 "2016-07-23T20:53:57Z")
I was such a geek, drew and named many spaceships and submarines with names as such: Najeana Lyndivea Anderquosea Menifoleax Tassitan Provistea 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/8 "2016-07-23T22:02:52Z")
Slight diversion, but a fairly well-known sff writer named the commander of a ship after me. Bad things happened to said commander. (I think the ship was eaten by a singularity shortly after the cameo.) Author didn’t mean anything by it, just reached for the first name at hand and we’d been arguing on FIDOnet or Usenet. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2016, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/9 "2016-07-23T22:40:32Z")
My first novel had a spaceship named _The Wreckless_. I probably got it from the rock group Wreckless Eric. The ship - a river trader - in my fantasy novel is _The Enchantress_. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/10 "2016-07-24T05:01:51Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Slight diversion, but a fairly well-known sff writer named the commander of a ship after me. . . . Keen and nifty! Jack McDevitt named a ship “The Patrick Heffernan,” after the owner/manager of a sci-fi/mystery themed bookstore here in San Diego. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/11 "2016-07-24T07:56:46Z")
It was never published (because it was crap), but I once wrote a science fiction short story featuring a starship called the _Tennyson_. IIRC, the entire class of warships was named after poets. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2016, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/12 "2016-07-24T11:56:05Z")
A rivergoing merchant vessel: _Promises Delivered_ A seagoing trader that often filled its hold with sugar: _Honeybee_ A swift, small seagoing messenger ship/small warship (schooner): _Seaspray_ A swift warship (brig), in pursuit of _Seaspray_: _Daggerfish_ The last four are all age of sail ships. A huge, cylindrical spaceship, rotating to provide artificial gravity, carrying the first colonists outside of Earth system on a decades-long journey to another star system: _Aotea_ _Aotea_ is a mythical canoe that carried the first Maori settlers to New Zealand, in Maori mythology. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2016, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-fictional-ships-youve-named-the-sequel/760650/13 "2016-07-26T22:48:13Z")
Fictional ship-writers - Here’s a chance to turn fiction into reality. The Sydney Harbour ferry fleet is taking on six new vessels and is running a naming competition. Apart from Ferry McFerryFace I - VI, which I suspect will make a strong showing, some of the suggestions above would make mighty fine names to be crossing the greatest harbour in the world. Details are here - [http://www.nameyourferry.com.au/](http://www.nameyourferry.com.au/)