Fuel your dreams at annual boat show

You will find a great deal at the National Boat Show, which started its two-week run Friday at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center.

You’ll find sport boats and ski boats, sail boats and cruisers, fishing boats and pontoon boats. You will find new ways to lift your boat and people who will build a new dock for your boat. You will find personal watercraft and enough accessories to sink an average-sized boat.

You will find boats you can climb on and boats you can sleep on. You will find boats that can take you where you need to go and boats that can take you away from it all.

You’ll find boats that can make you a captain and boats that can make you dream.

You will find everything you need to be safe on a boat and many things to make you comfortable on a boat.

You will find ways to haul your boat and ideas to store your boat.

You can lose yourself among more boats than you will find at an average-sized marina.

But you won’t find the answer to one simple question: Why do we call ships and boats “she?”

In the English language, few inanimate objects call for a gender-specific pronoun. They can be referred to as “it.”

Call someone’s watercraft “it” and you could start a fight, or at least receive a stern reprimand.

Scholars insist that the true reason for ships and boats needing a female pronoun in the modern English language is lost to history. Some speculate that it dates back to a time when ships were named after goddesses, a tradition that gave way to naming boats after important female figures in the life of the ship’s owner.

Other speculate that the custom is a throwback to a time when the language did use gender-specific pronouns for inanimate objects. That discussion, however, is exceedingly boring.

Perhaps the most likely explanation is that the custom in most Romance languages is to use a feminine pronoun to refer to a ship, and that English sailors merely adopted the custom and continue it to this day.

While they are by no means official, you can find some colorful-but-sexist reasons with a brief Google search.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces for the United States and Allied forces during World War II, is often quoted as telling the Society of Sponsors of the United States Navy: “A ship is always referred to as ‘she’ because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder.”

One of the most amusing reasons comes from George Moses of Falmouth, Mass., who is quoted often across the Internet. His complete work, “Why is a ship called ‘she’?” can even be purchased printed on a cloth suitable either for framing to hang or wiping up spills, depending on your point of view, in the galley.

He writes, in part:

“A ship is called ‘she’ because there is always a great deal of ‘bustle’ around her; there is usually a gang of men about; she has a ‘waist’ and ‘stays’; it takes a lot of paint to keep her looking good; it is not the initial expense that ‘breaks’ you, it is the ‘upkeep’; she can be all ‘decked’ out’; … she shows her ‘topsides’; hides her ‘bottom’; and, when coming into port, always heads for the ‘buoys.’ “