Inspired by this thread, I’m curious…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’ve only got two I can think of off the top of my head—the Argent Bifid and the Lancehead.
Anyone else?
I wrote a small story about a man buying a sailboat from an elderly man’s estate and sailing it to Catalina. Out on the ocean he suddenly smells cigar smoke, and remembers being told the late owner was a cigar smoker, He discovers his his engine is overheating, and repairs it quickly, at which point the cigar smoke is smelled no more.
He renames his boat Seance.
In another old wooden sloops are named Lamplighter, **Childhood’s End **and Overreacher.
Back when I was playing VGA Planets, I tended to name my ships after cities/towns. The bigger the ship, the larger the namesake location.
I’m prepping for a RPG campaign set aboard a spaceship named the “Fair Trade.”
The Europa (a starship), the Silvermoon (luxury passenger ship - ironically decorated primarily in gold and platinum - but it’s owned by a vampire, and none of this world’s moons are golden in colour, so…), the Kestrel (starship)…
I know I’ve used more, but those are the only ones I’m not blanking on right now.
The starship the main character in one of my novels owns is called “The Dutchman.”
When I was a super geeky kid I drew and named my own spaceships and submarines for my own galactic civilizations, I know very lame. Some of my made up names were:
Najeana
Provistea
Lyndivea
Anderquozea
Menifoleeax
Nin-Osensa
Taieai-Don
Tassitan
Some drawings from my youth of the above ships.
Yes, I know super geeky lame.
In RPGs, I’v had both fantasy oceangoing and sfi-fi spacegoing ships named after various Japanese mythical creatures - Kitsune, Tanuki, Kappa, Tengu, Shojo.
Another fantasy setting had sea ships named by full lines from various Romantic poets - IIRC, there was “A homeless sound of joy was in the sky”, “Then stretches out my golden wing”, “O well for the fisherman’s boy”, “Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green”, and some others. Of course, players rapidly shortened these to “skyjoy”, goldwing" etc, but the ships (animate - inhabited by spirits) always insisted on the full name before doing anything.
My most recent unpublishable story featured the third ship in the ill-fated Franklin expedition. Since the two real ships were the Terror and the Erebus, I named the third ship the HMS Tartarus. (This ship fell through a Symmes opening and formed the core of a colony in Pellucidar, Fort Tartarus.)
The Wreckless
The USS Perry K Orbino, a frigate in an alternate WWII. She was armed with 40mm gatling guns. Big gatling guns.
I named some battlecruisers in an SF screenplay the Strank, the Block, the Hayes, the Sousley, and the Gagnon. A medical veseel in the same script was the Bradley. I figured if you knew the origin of the names (only a couple were mentioned in dialogue, the rest just seen) you might smile; if you didn’t it would not distract.
Sir Rhosis
In an as-yet-unplaced story about a trip to the moon, I named the ship the Hans Pfall. Look it up.
Sailboats have engines now?
Wonders never cease.
What do you think they use if there’s no wind?
Engines on a sailboat aren’t that uncommon.
Well, it’s not writing, per se, but in an old Star Wars game and in EVE Online, my personal starfighter in both settings was named The Rascal King. It’s become my standard whenever I have the ability to name a ship in games or in writing, with Bosstone as the pilot handle.
Several short stories I’ve written have involved boats (not ships.) Dog II is a V-Drive sport boat owned by a small-town real estate mogul with severe anxiety disorder; Destrier is the sailing yacht belonging to a wealthy Rhodesian expatriate in upstate New York; Valerie Owens is the fishing boat that the protagonist commandeers in an attempt to escape an animal attack in People vs. Animals, an as-yet unfinished story about an all-out war between people and animals.
In X2: the Threat, one of my capital ships was called the Shinde Kudasai (Please Die). Other ships I’ve named have been given more generic names, including a Soviet colony ship called the Red Star.
In two different Star Wars RPG campaigns, my character owned a starship.
In one, we named the ship the Corellian Dancer. The ship was the same model as the Millennium Falcon, and both of the ship’s owners were from Corellia.
In the other, the ship was an old consular ship from the Old Republic days; those tended to have red paint jobs. The ship was given to my PC (the black-sheep child of a noble family), with the instructions to “use this to go far away from us, and not come back for a long period of time”. So, it was named the Crimson Wanderer.
Hardly a bastion of creativity, any time I play a game which has a freight style vessel (space or water), the first one gets named the Ceres.
Each time I play Pirates!, my flag ship is the Reconquista, no matter my nationality. I figure I probably got it from the Spanish anyway even if I’m playing French/English/Dutch 