Nelson & His World

How recent is the formulaic phrase, 'God bless her, and all who sail in her' that is used when a ship is launched? Would Nelson have been familiar with it?

Do other seafaring nations have a similar stock phrase? Having lived in Norway, I know that the Norwegians say, 'Hell og lykke folger deg på aller haver' ('Good luck and fortune follow you on all the seas'. - the 'o' in 'folger' should have a line through it but I can't find it on the keyboard!)

Does anyone know of any others?

Anna,

I don't know how long the actual words spoken (in Great Britain at any rate) have been in use at a launching ceremony, but the ceremony itself is of some antiquity. Found this on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_naming_and_launching

If the ship is launched 'end on', this is usually done stern first in the UK. However, in some European and other countries ships are launched bow first. I don't quite know why the difference, although personally I would have thought that a bow-launched ship was less managable. Ships began to be side-launched in the nineteenth century, perhaps the most famous example (the first?) being Brunel's 'Great Eastern' on the Thames, which took several attempts before it entered the river. There used to be a plaque marking the spot. A good diorama model of this can be seen at the NMM, where one could spend some time discovering the various other things going on besides looking at the ship herself! There are also several photographs taken at the time, perhaps the most well known being of Brunel himself standing, I think, in front of the enormous chains used for the launch.

Nelson would perhaps have been familiar with a ceremony of sorts, although not perhaps as we know it, but I am not aware that he attended any such event. The larger naval vessels were usually 'floated out' rather than launched, since they were built in the dockyards in a dry dock. Smaller vessels such as frigates, which were often built in private yards under contract, would have been launched in the traditional way.

The reason why you can't find the 'o' with an oblique line through it is that you very likely don't have a Norwegian keyboard. It's not on my Swedish one either, which has instead three keys marked å, ä, and ö, which are used in Swedish – or so I'm told!

In Holland they say when launching a ship “ik doop u en wens u en uw bemanning een behouden vaart". Name of the ship, I baptise you and wish you and your crew a safe sailing/journey/voyage.

Would it be considered as bad luck for the ship's future, when the champagne bottle refuses to break at the launch ceremony?
Sylvia

Sylvia,

I believe all sorts of thing have been held up as being considered 'bad luck', or predicted as ill omen, for such a ship at her launch. However in many cases nothing untoward has occurred, other than as happens to most ships during their career. Conversely, I am sure that there are instances where accidents at sea, which otherwise can't be explained, have repeatedly happened to a vessel where her launch went without a hitch.

Incidents of the bottle of champagne refusing to break on the ship's bows have happened on numerous occasions, so numerous in fact that ways have been devised to minimise the liklihood of its not breaking - and even then there are occasions where it still resist subbornly! The ploys involved have included making the glass thinner in the area of contact, perhaps by a partial cut through the bottle – the evidence being covered by a strategically placed ribbon, or the bottle being broken by a mechanism, which the person naming the ship operates. Very often the bottle simply hasn't broken because the person 'wielding' it probably doesn't use enough force, or it hits the bow at the wrong angle.

At one time it was also held to be bad luck to change a ship's name, thus in the RN of Nelson's time captured French or Spanish ships retained their names during their time in service. Not so today however, where vessels – usually merchant ships – seem to change their name at the drop of a hat and probably due to a change in ownership. I can remember once seeing a ship which had had three different names, but the letters of the earlier two had not been removed from the vessel's bows – they had merely been painted over the same colour as the hull. From a certain angle however, they were clearly visible. Of course this might mean that a vessel's current name might be painted in rather an odd place, so as not to be interfered with by the letters from the previous names!

Anna, 'God bless her, and all who sail in her' doesn't seem to appear in anything indexed in Google Books from before the early 20th century (but then mentioned as an old or historic blessing). What do appear are a few other similar prayers and toasts before voyages like "Success to the XXX and all who sail in her". See here: http://books.google.co.uk/books?q=%22al ... =1&num=100 (Note - some publication dates are wrong!)

Kester, I was fortunate enough to spend many of my childhood summer holidays at Portmellon in Cornwall, where Percy Mitchell was still building traditional wooden fishing boats of up to 50 foot in length (he had built a 70 foot boat, but that was before my time!). He had also built a gaff-rigged sailing dinghy in the 1930s for my grandfather, who (many years later!) taught me how to sail in her - but that's getting away from the point! I don't know how far the similarities in methods with earlier and larger ships went, but Percy Mitchell always built a boat so that its waterline was perfectly horizontal during the build. As his boats had a deeper draft at the stern, that meant the keel blocks were higher at the bow so that the keel sloped down to the stern. It strikes me that a ship built on a sloping slip would logically also be built with its stern at the lower end, and thus launched stern first.