The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-01-02
WHY ALL SHIPS ARE SHE.
A Deserved Ccmplimcnt Alike 10 the Sex and the Vehicles Of Civilization.

From the New York Times.
 A worthy citizen of Hamburg is some what exercised in mind over the ques- ton, What is the proper sex for ships? Should one mention ship as he, she. or 1t? Can one. in fact attribute to boats any distinction of sex at all? These, are matters that are by no means confined to sailormen and dwellers in seaports; for the same embarrassment which the Ham, burg merchant discovers in order to be consistent in German meets the French man and Russian at every twist and turn and to less extent the Briton and the American.
 If we take a vessel in a strictly mat ter of fact way and consider the steam ship and sailing craft merely as a com mon carrier, We feel that the ship is It, a poor neuter like the worker bee and worker ant. But what are we to do with man of war" fragrant. He if lan- guage means anything, yet a vessel al ways mentioned as she by any tar who has learned the use of his sealegs? The yachtsman who in an unlucSy hour has christened his yacht with a masculine name is immediately confronted by this dilemma. From the Captain down. the crew is alluding to the vessel as she. and getting themselves into all sorts of grammatical doldrums. It is not the sail
 
 yachts are called the Thomas Q, Land rubber or the Jeremiah Skaggs, or just plain Norseman.
 | With an unerring instinct and the deep | traditions of the sea shaping his utter | ance. the veriest swab speaks of the ves- sel on which he has shipped as a woman. 1 nor Is there any record cf a stewar less | or a captains wife who ever a,luda1 to a | boat as a masculine being. Names of | ships that have a disthtctivnly masculine | meaning do not cary with them any | right to consider the craft otherwise than | as woman, and the sooner slipbulders | and those who ba ctize vessels make up | their minds to thu inevitable ,..c better. The unaccount a ble hehaviar 0f ships under sail has been .reyeI for this uni versal attributio on of femninitv, the gen. | tier sex from ths aariiass ages having l been accused of whim oy tyrant man. More gallant is the old explanation that
 ship Is a thing of beauty which the | sailor loves as he does his sweetheart,
 which is certainly one greatly to be rre- | ferred to that patented by same curmud- geon of husband to tho effecS that the rigging of ship is always requiring new | expenditures and the pvoyisioning rf her | keeps the captain poor.
 These explanations bear on their face | the marks of conclusion arrived at from an imperfect knowledge of the antiquity and unlverSality or the sex attriputlon, a source of endless confusion in matters of grammar and of science generally. as we all know. since the tendency to generalize from insufficient data is a foible inherent to the human mind. The idea that ship is corceived of as woman because 1t chankes its course at every shift of the wind. thereby comparing ships and women to fweathercocks. cannot be too severely reprobated. It was invented by some sail- orman who took too literally the sugges- tion that he might have wife in every mort. and having played the Mormon on fhe sly lived to become a misogynst, fustly overtaken at last by retribution for his deceitful course.
 The sentiment that ship is woman is primeval like the use of ship among Ehe Chinese and Japanese as a symbol of 3fortune and good luck. As civilization ad-