ship

ship in figurative and allusive phrases, a ship traditionally typifies the fortunes or affairs of a person, or the person themselves in regard to them. A ship is also the emblem of St Anselm, St Nicholas of Myra, and St Ursula, and the 7th-century French abbot St Bertin, whose monastery of Sithiu (Saint-Bertin) in northern France was originally accessible only by water.
do not spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar proverbial saying, early 17th century, in which ship represents a dialectal pronunciation of sheep. The original literal sense was ‘do not allow sheep to die for the lack of a trifling amount (or halfpennyworth) of tar’, tar being used to protect sores and wounds on sheep from flies, but the current sense was standard by the mid 19th century.

The saying is used generally to warn against risking loss or failure through unwillingness to allow relatively trivial expenditure.
Ship money was a tax raised in England in medieval times to provide ships for the navy; originally levied on ports and maritime towns and counties. It was revived by Charles I in 1634 without parliamentary consent and abolished by statute in 1640; the actual term is first recorded in William Prynne's Remonstrance against Shipmoney of 1636.
ship of fools a ship whose passengers represent various types of vice or folly; the expression comes from the title of Sebastian Brant's satirical work Das Narrenschiff (1494), translated into English by Alexander Barclay as ship The shyp of folys of the worlde (1509). In the 20th century, the American writer Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) used The Ship of Fools as the title of a novel (1962) depicting a group of passengers (mostly German) on a long voyage in which the ship is a microcosm of contemporary life.
ship of state the state and its affairs, especially when regarded as being subject to adverse or changing circumstances; a ship is taken here as the type of something subject to adverse or changing weather. The phrase (as ship of the state) is first recorded in English in a 1675 translation of Machiavelli's The Prince.
ship of the desert a camel; in his Relation of a Journey (1615), recounting his travels in Turkey and Egypt, the English poet George Sandys wrote, ‘Camels. These are the ships of Arabia, their seas are the deserts.’
ship of the line a sailing warship of the largest size, used in the line of battle; the term is recorded from the early 18th century.
ships that pass in the night people whose acquaintance is necessarily transitory; the phrase comes originally from a poem by Longfellow, ‘The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth’ (1874).
a sinking ship used with reference to a situation in which people are deserting an organization or enterprise that is failing.
when one's ship comes home a traditional saying, mid 19th century; referring to a future state of prosperity which will exist when a cargo arrives.

See also abandon ship, the face that launched a thousand ships, one hand for oneself and one for the ship, little leaks sink the ship, rats desert a sinking ship, a woman and a ship ever want mending.