ship large craft in which persons and goods may be conveyed on water. In the U.S. Navy the term boat refers to any vessel that is small enough to be hoisted aboard a ship, and ship is used for any larger vessel; all submarines, no matter what size, are designated as boats, and ship-sized vessels are often referred to colloquially as boats (e.g. steamboats).

Seagoing vessels large enough to be called ships were used in ancient times by the Egyptians, Cretans, Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, and Chinese. Ancient ships were propelled by oars or by sails or by both. They were of different types for different functions. Heavy, slow ships with round bottoms were used to transport grain, while slim-keeled ships such as the trireme were used for warfare (see galley ). In the Middle Ages Viking ships, propelled by both oars and sails, carried Leif Eriksson to America; their structure is well known from such evidences as the Gokstad ship (unearthed in 1880), which is 80 ft (24.4 m) long, 16 ft 6 in. (5 m) wide, and 6 ft 10 in. (2.1 m) deep.

The introduction of the mariner's compass, the sternpost rudder, and the lateen sail made possible the transoceanic voyages of the Portuguese who rounded Africa and of Columbus and other explorers of the New World, giving new impetus to the building and navigation of ships. Many sturdy and refined types of wooden sailing vessels up to three hundred feet in length were developed. Men-of-war included the ship of the line , the frigate , and the corvette . Differing especially in such details as number and position of masts, with sails either square-rigged or fore-and-aft, ships were differentiated into such types as brig , clipper , and schooner . Building wooden ships became an important industry, especially in Britain and the United States.

The success of Fulton's Clermont on the Hudson River (1807) prepared the way for the superseding of sailing ships by steamships (see steamship ), and later in the 19th cent. steel began to replace wood as material for shipbuilding. Steel ships can be made much larger than wooden ships. The steam engine was followed by the steam turbine , which actuated the propeller directly or through gear mechanisms. Both methods of power production underwent many improvements through the years before the diesel engine came (1902–3) into maritime use. In some ships, diesel engines are now used to generate electricity, which is used to power propeller motors. In the 1950s nuclear power was introduced in military vessels and icebreakers; modern nuclear submarines can travel submerged for months at a time (see nuclear energy ).

Modern freight ships are equipped with powerful machines for handling cargo; and, although jet transportation led to the demise of the great ocean liners, cruise ships continue to be built, providing the luxuries of the finest hotels. The pivotal vessels of modern warfare are the aircraft carrier and the submarine ; other warships important in recent times include the battleship , cruiser , and destroyer .

Bibliography: See H. B. Mason, Encyclopedia of Ships and Shipping (1977); G. Blackburn, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Ships, Boats, and Vessels (1982); K. J. Rawson and E. C. Tupper, Basic Ship Theory (1983); A. Kludas, Great Passenger Ships of the World (5 vol., 1986–87); Jane's Fighting Ships (pub. annually since 1897).

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.

366. Ships

See also 399. TRAVEL ; 408. VEHICLES

barratry

Law. an act of fraud by a master or crew at the expense of the owners of a ship or the owners of its cargo. Also spelled barretry. —barratrous, adj.

bottomry

the pledging of a ship as security for a loan; if the ship is lost the debt is canceled.

cabotage

the act of navigating or trading along a coast.

demurrage

1. the delay of a ship at mooring beyond the time stipulated for unloading or other purposes.

2. the charge levied for such delay.

flotsam

material floating on the sea, especially debris or goods from ship-wrecks. Cf. jetsam .

jetsam, jetsom

1. part of a ship’s cargo thrown overboard, as to lighten the load in the event of danger.

2. such cargo when it is washed ashore.

3. anything which is discarded. Cf. flotsam .

lodemanage

Obsolete, the skill or art of the pilot; pilotage.

lodesman

Obsolete, a ship’s pilot.

loxodrome

a rhumb line or curve on the surface of a sphere intersecting all meridians at the same angle; hence, the course of a ship or aircraft following a constant compass direction. —loxodromic, adj.

loxodromics, loxodromy

the art, science, or practice of sailing obliquely across lines of longitude at a constant bearing to them. —loxodromic, adj.

naumachia, naumachy

1. a mock sea fight, as in ancient Rome.

2. the place where such fights were conducted.

naupathia

seasickness.

nauropometer

Rare. an apparatus for measuring the inclination of a heeling or listing ship.

nauscopy

the art, sometimes pretended, of being able to sight ships or land at great distances.

pallograph

an instrument for recording the vibrations of a steamship. —pallographic, adj.

pharology

the technique or practice of guiding ships by means of signal lights, as in lighthouses.

pilotage

1. the act of piloting.

2. the skill or expertise of a pilot. See also 131. DUES and PAYMENT .

plunderage

1. the embezzling of goods on board ship.

2. the goods embezzled.

pratique

permission given to a ship to do business with a port once quarantine and other regulations have been complied with.

prisage

1. the former privilege of the English monarch to receive two tuns of wine from every ship importing twenty tuns or more.

2. Also called butlerage . a duty of two shillings on every tun imported by foreign merchants.

3. (in England) the Crown’s share of merchandise seized lawfully as a prize at sea.

salvage

1. the recovery of a ship or its contents or cargo after damage or sinking.

2. the material recovered and the compensation to those who recover it.

3. the rescue and use of any found or discarded material.

spoliation

the act of seizing neutral ships with government permission in time of war. See also 81. CHURCH ; 391. THEFT .

ship Vessel for conveying passengers and freight by sea. The earliest sea-going ships were probably Egyptian, making voyages to the e coast of Africa in c.1500 bc. In China, extensive sea voyages were being made by ships that carried more than one mast and featured a rudder by c.ad 200, some 1200 years before such ships appeared in Europe. In the Mediterranean region, the galleys of the Greek, Phoenician and Roman navies combined rows of oars with a single square sail, as did the Viking longboats, which were capable of withstanding violent seas. By the 14th and 15th centuries, carracks and galleons were being developed to fulfil the exploration of the New World. Fighting ships of the 17th and 18th centuries included frigates of various designs. Sailing freighters culminated in the great clippers of the late 19th century, some of which had iron hulls. A century or so earlier, the first steamships had been built. They were powered by wood or coal-burning steam engines that drove large paddle wheels, hence the term paddlesteamer. In 1819, the first Atlantic crossing was made by ‘steam-assisted sail’, and this crossing soon became a regular service. By the mid-19th century, steamships, such as Brunel's Great Britain (1844), were driven by propellers or screws. Marine steam turbines developed at the turn of the 19th century, and gradually replaced reciprocating (back-and-forth cranking) steam engines for large vessels, early examples being the ocean liners of the 1900s. Oil, rather than coal, soon became the favoured fuel for large marine engines. Diesel engines developed in the early 1900s, but were considered unreliable and, although less expensive to run, they did not replace steam turbines until the 1970s. Some of the newest military ships and icebreakers are fitted with nuclear engines in which heat from a nuclear reactor raises steam in boilers to drive steam turbines. See also aircraft carrier; boat; submarine

ship, from the Old English scip, the generic name for seagoing vessels, as opposed to boats, though submarines are known as boats as are the different types of fishing vessels. Ships were originally personified as masculine, but by the 16th century they had become feminine. In 2002 Lloyd's of London decided that all merchant ships should be described as ‘it’, though the British Ministry of Defence has confirmed that warships shall still be defined as feminine. Up to the 1950s, yachts were often described as ‘ships’, but it is rare to hear them called this nowadays. For different types of ships see: aircraft carrier; balinger; barque; barquentine; battlecruiser; battleship; bilander; bireme; blackwall frigates; bomb ketch; brig; brigantine; bulk carrier; caravel; carrack; clipper; coaster; cog; collier; container ship; corbita; corvette; cruiser; cruise ship; destroyer; dromon; east indiaman; ferry; frigate; galizabra; galleass; galleon; galley; galliot; hermaphrodite brig; hovercraft; hydrofoil; ironclads; jackass barque; knarr; liberty ships; longship; lorcha; mercy ships; monitor; nao; ocean liners; packet; paddle steamer; pink; polacre; q-ship; replica ship; research ships; ro-ro ship; round ship; sail training; sepulchral ships; sloop; snow; surface effect ship; swath ship; tanker; tartan; trabacolo; tramp ship; treasure ship; trireme; tug; victory ships; weather ship; wing-in-surface effect ship; xebec.

ship sb. OE. sċip = OS. skip (Du. schip), skif (G. schiff), ON., Goth skip *skipam, OHG. of unkn. orig.
So ship vb. late OE. sċipian. Hence shipman (arch.) seaman, sailor. OE. sċipman. shipment XIX. shipmoney (hist.) impost for providing ships for the navy. XVII. shipper (-ER1) †seaman OE.; one who ships goods XVIII. ship-shape trim, orderly. XVIII. alt. of †ship shapen (XVII) ‘arranged in ship fashion’, i.e. SHIP sb., and pp. of SHAPE. shipwreck what is cast up from a wreck XI; destruction or loss of a ship XV.

ships Seafaring was not a skill of the Israelites; it was the sailors of Hiram, king of Tyre, who transported the materials for Solomon's Temple (1 Kgs. 5: 9), and in the NT Paul's journeys across the Mediterranean were made in trading vessels from Egypt (Acts 28: 11), not without misadventures (2 Cor. 11: 25). Jesus' disciples had fishing vessels on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 1: 19–20). One such vessel of that time was discovered by archaeologists in 1986 and has been carefully preserved.

Ships. See Aircraft Carriers; Amphibious Ships and Landing Craft; Battleships; Cruisers; Destroyers; River Craft; Sailing Warships; Steamships; Submarines; Support Ships; Swift Boats.

ship •blip, chip, clip, dip, drip, equip, flip, grip, gyp, harelip, hip, kip, lip, nip, outstrip, pip, quip, rip, scrip, ship, sip, skip, slip, snip, strip, tip, toodle-pip, trip, whip, yip, zip •biochip • microchip • woodchip •sheepdip • skinny-dip • rosehip •landslip • payslip •fillip, Philip •gymslip • side-slip • polyp • oxlip •cowslip • pillowslip •julep, tulip •Cudlipp • paperclip • catnip • parsnip •turnip • handgrip • cantrip • hairgrip •airstrip • filmstrip • kirby grip •weatherstrip • gossip • airship •midship • kinship • godship • warship •gunship • worship • wingtip •fingertip • horsewhip • bullwhip •bunyip