Name Histories S

Ship Name Histories - Database of histories of ship names beginning with letter S.

Sabre

Name Origin: - Sword.

Sabre

Name Origin: Sword.

Sabretache

Name Origin: - Sabretache. Literally, “sword pocket”; from the German tasche, pocket.

Sachsen

Name Origin: Kingdom of Saxony, one of the Federal States of the Empire. Dresden is its capital.

Sado

Name Origin: A river on the west coast of Portugal. Setubal Bay is situated at its mouth.

Saetta

Name Origin: Arrow.

Saffo

Name Origin: Sappho. Celebrated poetess of ancient Greece, whose odes have in part been preserved to us. She dwelt on the island of Mytilene, and legend relates that she cast herself into the sea out of unrequited love for the youth Phaon. This vessel is called after the star of that name.

Saga

Name Origin: In Norse mythology the goddess of wisdom and poetry, the friend and adviser of Odin. The Old Norse semi-historical tales and poems are called “Sague.”

Sagaie

Name Origin: Assegai

Sagami

Name Origin: the province in which the Yokosuka naval station is situated. The name has been bestowed on the Russia battleship Peresviet, scuttled at Port Arthur in December 1904 and subsequently raised.

Sagi

Name Origin: the snowy heron.

Sagittario

Name Origin: Archer. This vessel is called after the star of that name.

Saida

Name Origin: The ancient Sidon, a town on the coast of Syria, near Beyrout. A squadron of four British ships (Thunderer, Cyclops, Gorgon, and Stromboli), the Austrian frigate Guerriera, Captain the Archduke Frederick, and four Turkish corvettes, the whole under Captain Napier, R.N., bombarded the place, held by Mehemet Ali of Egypt, in September 1840, and took it by assault ion the 26^th of that month with a force of 1000 seamen landed from the ships.

Sainte Barbe

Name Origin: - Saint Barbara, a martyr of the third century. It is recounted of her that when imprisoned within a strong tower the lightning smote the tower asunder, and she came forth unhurt. Hence she is one of the saints who were appealed to in danger from fire and lightening. Under her protection were placed the powder magazines of ships. She is the patron saint of soldiers, especially of the artillery.

Saint Louis

Name Origin: - Louis IX, King of France; born 1215, died 1270. He was cannoised by Pope Boniface VIII, in 1297, for his virtuous life and services as a Crusader. He reformed the administration of the law, and, though a devout son of the Church, withstood the Papal encroachments in his dominions. In 1248 he led a crusade to Egypt, but was captured by the Saracens in 1250, and only returned to France on being ransomed in 1254. In 1270 he led another crusade against the Mahomedans in Tunis, but fell a victim to the pestilence which broken out in his camp there.

Salamander

Salamandra

Name Origin: Salamander.

Salaminia

Name Origin: “Salaminian,” inhabitant of the island of Salamis, near the Piraeus; the name of one of two sacred ships of the Athenians which annually bore their gifts to the shrine of Apollo at Delos, and which during the Peloponnesian War acted as scouts to the Athenian fleet. In 428 B.C. the Spartan fleet, having failed to relieve Mytilene, sailed from the Bay of Ephesus to make a sudden descent upon Corcyra (corfu). The Salaminia and her sister ship, the Paralos, which had been detached by the Athenian Admiral from Mytilene, guessing at the enemy’s intentions, outstripped him and brought up a detachment of Athenian ships from Naupaktos (opposite Patras) just in time to save the hastily equipped Corcyrian fleet from utter destruction and the island from capture.

Salmon

Salvador Correa

Name Origin: Salvador Correa de Sa Benevides distinguished himself by retaking the Portuguese West African settlement of Angola from the Dutch in 1648.

Sandpiper

San Giorgio

Name Origin: St George. According to the legends he was a nobleman of Cappadocia (in Asia Minor), and served a tribune in the Roman army during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. He saved the life of a noble maiden by slaying a dragon, which was about to devour her. For his defence of the persecuted Christians he suffered martyrdom on April 23^rd, 290 (according to others, 303). During the Crusades, the worship of St George as the patron of chivalry came into vogue in Western Europe. The ship name commemorates the ancient maritime republic of Genoa, of which St George was the patron saint.

Sankt Georg

Name Origin: Saint George. Accroding to the legends he was a nobleman of Cappadocia (in Asia Minor), and served as a tribune in the Roman Army during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. He saved the life of a noble maiden by slaying a dragon, which was about to devour her. For his defence of the persecuted Christians he suffered martyrdom on April 23^rd, 290 (according to others, 303). During the Crusades the worship of St. George as the patron of chivalry came into the vogue in Western Europe.

San Marco

Name Origin: St Mark, the Apostle, patron saint of the ancient maritime republic of Venice.

San Martino

Name Origin: Site of the battle in which the Sardinians, under Victor Emmanuel, defeated the Austrians on June 24^th 1859, on the same day as the French defeated them at Solferino.

Sansego

Name Origin: One of the islands in the Gulf of Quarnero in the Adriatic.

Santa Fe

Name Origin : One of the provinces of the Argentine Republic.

Santinella

Name Origin: Sentimental.

Sao Gabriel

Name Origin: St. Gabriel. The name of the caravel, which carried Vasco da Gama on his voyage of discovery in 1497.

Sao Paulo

Name Origin: One of the twenty United States; its capital bears the same name.

Sao Raphael

Name Origin: St Raphael. The name of one of Vasco da Gamma’s vessels in 1497, commanded by his brother Paulo da Gama. On the return journey she was wrecked near Mombasa.

Sape

Name Origin: - Sap, a military term in siege operations.

Saphir

Name Origin: - Sapphire.

Sapphire

Sappho

Name Origin: Celebrated poetess of ancient Greece, whose odes have in part been preserved to us. She dwelt on the island of Mitylene, and legend relates that she cast herself into the sea out of unrequited love for the youth Phaon.

Saracen

Name Origin: Name given by the Christians to the Mahommedan Arabs and Moors in the Middle Ages.

Saratoff

Name Origin: A town on the Volga, and capital of the government of that name

Sarbacane

Name Origin: - Air cane, a tube from which a bullet can be blown by the mouth.

Sardegna

Name Origin: The Island of Sardinia. After having in turn been a Carthaginian colony and a Roman dependency after having belonged successively to the Vandals and Saracens, and having alternatively been in the possession of Pisa, Genoa, and Spain, it was conquered by England for Austria in 1708. In 1720 Victor Amadeus II, King of Savoy, ancestor of the present King of Italy, exchanged Sicily for Sardinia, and together with his possessions on the mainland, erected it into the Saqrdinian kingdom, which in 1860 became incorporated with the kingdom of Italy.

Sarjento Aldea

Name Origin: Sergeant of Marines of the Esmeralda in the memorable action off Iquique on May 21^st 1879. He followed Captain Prat in boarding the Huascar, and was killed at his side.

Sarpen

Name Origin: The name of the falls of the river Glommen.

Satellit

Name Origin: Satellite

Satsuki

Name Origin: A poetical name for May, the fifth month. The vessel bearing this name was formerly the Biedovi, in which admiral Rozhdestvensky sought to escape after the battle of the Sea of Japan, in May 1905, had gone against him; but she was captured with all onboard.

Satsuma

Name Origin: A province in the extreme south of the island of Kiushiu.

Sazanami

Name Origin: A ripple.

Sborul

Name Origin: Flight, from the act of flying.

Scharnhorst

Name Origin: General Gerhard von Scharnhorst, born 1756, died 1813, the reorganiser of the Prussian Army after its terrible defeats in the early wars against Napoleon. A born Hannoverian, he only entered the Prussian Army in 1801. He was the author and initiator of the first short service system, which automatically created a trained reserve. In the campaign of 1813 against Napoleon he served as blucher’s Chief of the Staff, and was mortally wounded at the battle of Grossgorschen.

Schlesien

Name Origin: Silesia, one of the provinces of the kingdom of Prussia.

Schleswig Holstein

Name Origin: One of the provinces of the kingdom of Prussia. Until 1864 the kings of Denmark were also Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein. Kiel, the principal naval port of the empire, is in this province.

Schorpioen

Name Origin: Scorpion.

Schwaben

Name Origin: Suabia, a former German Duchy lying between the Rhine, the Neckar, and the Lech. It played as important part in the history of the German Middle ages. The Suabians are the descendants of the old German tribes known as the “Allemani,” and now people Wurttemberg, Baden, and a part of Bavaria.

Schwalbe

Name Origin: Swallow.

Schwalbe

Name Origin: Swallow

Schwarfschutz

Name Origin: Sharp-shooter

Scorpione

Name Origin: Scorpion.

Scylla

Name Origin: In Homers' Odyssey, Scylla and Charybdis were two sea monsters dwelling on opposite sides of a narrow strait. Scylla had six long necks and mouths, with treble rows of teeth, wherewith she seized and devoured the victims flung up by the whirlpools of Charybdis. Odysseus (Ulysses) successfully passed between the these two monsters, but Scylla snatched six of his men off his ship. The name was later given to a rocky point on the Sicilian shore of the Straits of Messina.

Scylla

Name Origin: In Homer’s Odyssey Scylla and Charybdis were two-sea monsters dweeling on opposite sides of a narrow strait. Scylla had six necks and mouths, with treble rows of teeth, wherewith she seized and devoured the victims flung up by the whirlpools of Charybdis. Odysseus (Ulysses) successfully passed between these two monsters, but Scylla snatched six of his men off his ship. The name was later given to a rocky point on the Sicilian shore of the Straits of Messina.

Seagull

Seahorse

Seal

Sealark

Sebenico

Name Origin: A seaport town of Dalmatia

Secretar

Name Origin: Secretary bird

See Adler

Name Origin: Sea eagle, the bald headed eagle.

Seehund

Name Origin: Seal

Senna

Name Origin: A village on the Zambesi, which was of great importance in ancient times. Remarkable buildings of very great size having been discovered there in recent times.

Sentinel

Serdang

Name Origin: Territory on the east coast of Sumatra.

Serditi

Name Origin: Irascible.

Serpa Pinto

Name Origin: Alexander riocha de Serpa Pinto, military officer and African explorer, born 1846. In 1877-1878 he crossed South Africa from Benguela to Natal, exploring the Zambesi, and in 1885 explored the land west of Lake Nyassa. He actively opposed the British advances in the latter regions in 1889, and thus almost caused a conflict between Portugal and England. Recalled in 1890, he was elected a member of the Cortes, and afterwards became Governor of the Cape Verde Islands.

Serpente

Name Origin: Serpent, snake. This vessel is named after the star of that name.

Shannon

Name Origin: The largest river in Ireland; it flows past Limerick into the Atlantic.

Shark

Sharpshooter

Shearwater

Shen-Han

Name Origin: Precious Vessel.

Shigure

Name Origin: A gentle rain.

Shikinami

Name Origin: The waves chasing one another. Formerly the Russian gunboat Gaidanmak, scuttled at Port Arthur in December 1904 and afterwards raised.

Shikishima

Name Origin: Literally, “The outspread isles.” A poetical name for Japan. It was originally applied to the ancient capital in Yamato province.

Shinonome

Name Origin: The day dawn.

Shirakumo

Name Origin: A white cloud.

Shiranui

Name Origin: Literally, “The unknown fires.” The term is applied to what in ancient times were declared to be “the dragon’s lamps,” and took the form of of globular masses of flame that annually, in immense numbers, issued from the surface of the sea on the west coast to Kiushiu, principally at daybreak on the first of the eighth month, which, according to the Old Calendar, fell somewhere about the end of August or early in September.

Shirataka

Name Origin: White hawk.

Shiratsuyu

Name Origin: White dew.

Shirayuki

Name Origin: White snow.

Shirotae

Name Origin: A poetical term for whiteness.

Sho-Ko

Name Origin: The Japanese name for the Sungari River in Manchuria. This vessel was formerly the Russian Sungari, captured in 1904, and afterwards renamed the Matsuye, of which Sho-ko is another version.

Shtandart

Name Origin: Standard.

Sibirski Strelok

Name Origin: Siberian sharp-shooter.

Sibiryak

Name Origin: Inhabitant of Siberia.

Sibogo

Name Origin: Territory on the west coast of Sumatra.

Sicilia

Name Origin: the island of Sicily. Many flourishing Greek colonies existed in ancient times on its eastern and south-western coasts, whilst the Carthaginians established themselves on the northern. The island became a Roman province 210 B.C. In the ninth century the Saracens conquered it, but were expelled by the Normans in the eleventh century. From 1285 to 1409 an Aragonese dynasty reigned in Sicily, and when it became extinct the island fell by inheritance to Spain. From 1713 to 1720 it belonged to the House of Savoy, which ceded it to Austria, and Austria in 1738 ceded it to the Spanish bourbons reigning in Naples. In 1860 Sicily shook off the bourbon yoke, and became part of the kingdom of Italy.

Siegfried

Name Origin: The chief hero of the Niebelung saga, from which the great epic poem of the middle Ages, the “Niebelungen Lied,” is derived. A son of the king of the Low Countries, Siegfried in his youth slew a dragon, and by bathing in his blood became invulnerable, except for a spot between his shoulder baldes, which had been accidentally covered by a leaf. He accompanied his friend Gunther, king of the Burgundians, in guise of a vassal when the latter went to woo the norse Amazon Brunhilda. Covered with the cap of invisibility, which he had taken with the dragon’s hoard, he assisted Gunther in defeating Brunhilda in various athletic contests, and thus won her for his friends. In reward he received the hand of Grimhilda, Gunther’s sister. Before long Brunhilds discovered the deception which had been practised on her, and became Siegfried’s deadly enemy. Instigated by her, Hagen, one of Gunther’s vassals, during a hunting expedition, whilst Siegfried was bending over a spring to drink, aimed his spear at the vulnerable spot in his body and struck him dead.

Sig

Name Origin: A fish of the salmon-trout kind, found in the Neva.

Siguard

Name Origin: A mighty Viking and king in Sweden.

Silatch

Name Origin: Strong man.

Sild

Name Origin: Herring.

Silni

Name Origin: Vigorous.

Silure

Name Origin: - Silurus or sheat fish.

Silvado

Name Origin: A Brazilian naval officer killed in action at Curuzu, during the war with Paraguay.

Simoun

Name Origin: - The “simoon” or “simoom,” the hot dry wind of the desert.

Sinop

Name Origin: Sinop, a town on the south coast of the Black Sea, where in 1853 a Turkish squadron was destroyed by Admiral Nakhimoff.

Sirene

Name Origin: - Siren, mermaid.

Siretul

Name Origin: The River Siretu- flowing through Romania.

Sirio

Name Origin: Sirius, the dog star (Canis majoris).

Sirius

Name Origin: The Dog Star.

Sir James Douglas

Name Origin: Admiral Sir James Douglas, Bart; born 1703, died 1787. As Commander he took a distinguished part in the first battle of Quebec 1759. He carried the news of the surrender home to the king, who knighted him. In 1761 he commanded a squadron in the Leeward Islands. He was created a Baronet in 1786.

Sirocco

Name Origin: - The southeast wind of the Mediterranean.

Sir William Peel

Name Origin: Captain Sir William Peel, Royal Navy; born 1824, died 1858. He entered the naval service in 1838, became a Lieutenant in 1844, Commander 1846, and a Captain 1849. At the outbreak of the Indian mutiny in 1857 he was in China in command of the Shannon, frigate. Taking her to Calcutta, he formed his whose ship’s company into a naval brigade, which landed about the middle of august with ten of his 8-inch gun as a siege train. Proceeding up country, Captain Peel fought his first action on November 1^st at Kudjwa, assisted at the first relief of Lucknow that month, and the capture of Cawnpore in December. On January 2^nd 1858, he distinguished himself at the battle of Kallee-Nuddee, receiving the K.C.B. soon after. On March 9^th, during the siege of Lucknow, he was wounded, but when nearly recovered he was attacked by small pox, to which he succumbed on April 27^th, on his march back to Calcutta.

Sivootch

Name Origin: A species of beaver.

Sjaelland

Name Origin: Zealand, the largest island of Denmark.

Skaggald

Name Origin: In Norse mythology one of the Valkyres or “shield maidens” who bear the fallen heroes from the battlefield to Walhalla.

Skagul

Name Origin: In Norse mythology another of the Valkyres.

Skarv

Name Origin: Cormorant.

Skat

Name Origin: Skate (fish).

Skipjack

Skirmisher

Skjold

Name Origin: Shield.

Skoldmon

Name Origin: “shield maiden.” In Norse mythology another name for the Valkyres, heavenly maidens in the service of Odin, who descend upon the battlefield mounted on cloud steeds, and thence bear the fallen hero to Walhalla, the seat of the gods.

Skori

Name Origin: Rapid.

Skorpion

Name Origin: Scorpion.

Skorpion

Name Origin: Scorpion.

Skrei

Name Origin: God.

Skuld

Name Origin: In Norse mythology one of the three “Nornas,” goddesses of fate. She presided over the Past.

Sladen

Name Origin: Colonel Sir E. B. Sladen, born 1830, died 1890. During the war with Burma (1885-1886) he captured by boarding this vessel, which lay under the guns of Ava fort, she strongly armed and manned by King Theebaw’s men. Colonel Sladen was knighted, and the vessel, on passing into British possession, renamed after him.

Slava

Name Origin: Glory.

Slepiner

Name Origin: In Norse mythology the miraculous horse of the god Odin. It was supposed to have right legs.

Smardan

Name Origin: A village near Widin, taken by the Romanian troops on January 12^th 1878, during the war with Turkey.

Smerve

Name Origin: A volcano in Eastern Java.

Smeul

Name Origin: Kitre (a toy).

Smolensk

Name Origin: A Russian town.