ORIGINAL: warspite1
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
ORIGINAL: MilRevKo
Renaming a ship is very bad luck...VBL
Back in wooden ship days, the RN and the French used to trade warships like lunch money,
renaming their new toys with abandon. Nobody was more superstitious than the Royal Navy tar of that era, and I've never heard of any objections. More like an "in your face" feeling when they met the enemy the next time.
Warspite1
I thought the RN used to keep the names, hence the following captured French ships serving with the RN ships at Trafalgar: Entreprenante, Tonnant, Belleisle (admittedly, her name was changed from the original Formidable, but only because the RN already had a Formidable - and she was given a French name) and Spartiate.
I did some quick on-line research, and it looks as if the subject is more complex than I had thought. Much/most of the time it looks like the RN kept the original name, and often re-used the name decades later on a new ship, keeping the French spelling, accent marks, etc. In other cases, it re-named the ship to something similar, or that would be a proper English spelling. An example, I believe, is HMS Prothee, ex-
Protée (French ships of the era did not have national ship prefixes from what I read. No USS or HMS IOW.) I found cases from centuries before where Spanish ships had their names changed wholesale by the English, possibly for religious reasons. Pirates also often changed names, but I don't think they're relevant.[:)]
I didn't look for examples of French practices, but one from US history that might be illustrative was the fine ship
Bonhomme Richard (the first one; there have been several.) She was a former French Indiaman named
Duc de Duras. Perhaps the superstition does not extent to former merchant vessels, but in that case I'd say the USA got a good deal. And the US Navy got its first fighting motto.
