“The tugboat Sir Hugh Bell ran aground 06/01/1926 on Coatham Sands. The tug boat was trying to recover a buoy which had broken away, and washed up on the beach. It was reported that the tug boat would not be able to get off the sands for the next 10 days when high tides were expected.” Details courtesy of Redcar Shipwrecks list. Now another question why are all the ships called she? Terry Shaw advised: “Tradition is to consider ships as female, referring to them as ‘she’. Although it may sound strange referring to an inanimate object as ‘she’, this tradition relates to the idea of a female figure such as a mother or goddess guiding and protecting a ship and crew. Another idea is that in many languages, objects are referred to using feminine or masculine nouns. This is less common in English which tends to use gender-neutral nouns, however referring to ships as ‘she’ may refer to far more ancient traditions.
Interestingly, Captain Ernst Lindemann of the German battleship Bismarck referred to his ship as ‘he’, in view of its awesome power. In popular parlance, the tradition of naming ships ‘she’ has now become less common. It’s worth noting that the shipping industry newspaper, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, now calls ships ‘it’.
Image courtesy of Mike Holliday, thanks to Terry Shaw for the information update.
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