Naval Terms

When SF writers want to describe the life of a spacefaring society, they frequently use nautical terms. This is so common a practice that I have not been able to include every term that has made the transition from sea to space, and have therefore defined only the most common synonyms for "spaceship" and those that have undergone some change in form.

The analogy between travel in space and travel on the seas is a straightforward one — both entail enclosing people in a self-contained vessel, protected from a hostile environment by only a thin shell, in which they may spend long periods of time between ports, whether on islands or planets. This analogy is most directly made by simply using a nautical term in an outer-space setting, so boat, craft, ship, and vessel, as well as cruiser, destroyer, and dreadnought can describe both watercraft and spacecraft. Similarly, like a sea-going vessel, a spaceship may be composed of an external hull, punctuated with portholes, which encases and protects the decks, bulkheads, cabins, and bridge, not to mention the captain and crew. If it is a military vessel, it may belong to a navy, in which case the ship's captain probably reports to an admiral. Even the familiar science-fictional alien mother ship is an appropriation of a naval term. Frequently, SF writers take a nautical word and add "space" or "star" to it, as in space dock, space liner, space pirate, spaceship, starfleet, starport, etc. "Sea" can be replaced in compounds such as spacefaring, space-going, and space-sick, as can "ship," in words like spaceyard. Sometimes these appropriations and substitutions can be a matter of expedience, but there is a poetry to it as well; science fiction has often been a literature of exploration and adventure, and drawing on the language of the sea can hearken back to the excitement and romance of the Age of Sail.

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