Not a Boat

It's a ship, not a fucking boat, OK?  I know that there is no universally accepted definition of a modern ship as opposed to a boat, a good rule of thumb is that a ship carries bots, but a boat cannot carry a ship.  It's all a matter of scale.  So the vessel that gout stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking all traffic through it for nearly a week was most definitely a ship, not, as many people seem to think, a boat.  In point of fact, it is one of the world's largest container ships.  Having seen one of the world's other biggest container ships close up when I observed it entering Southampton water, I can confirm that these vessels are huge and definitely not boats.  Perhaps it is a function of getting older, but I find myself increasingly irritated by such ignorance of correct nomenclature, particularly in this case - we're meant to be a maritime nation, for God's sake.  Of course, having said that it is all a matter of scale, there is also the matter of location when it comes to defining what a ship is, in that to be a ship, a vessel has to be both large and sail on the open sea.  Some of the bulk carriers which ply locations like the Great Lakes are as big as ocean-going ships, but being confined to inland waterways, are traditionally referred to as boats.  Oh, and submarines, regardless of size, are also traditionally referred to as boats.  (The 'S' in the HMS prefix of Royal Navy subs stands for 'Submarine', not 'Ship').

Back in the days of sail, mind, there was a definition of what constituted a ship: it was a vessel with three square masts.  Anything smaller was defined according to the number and arrangements of of its masts - a brig, a sloop, a ketch and so on.  Back then, boats were anything too small to fall into any of these categories.  The reason I'm going on about this is because this whole 'boat' for 'ship' inaccuracy which has annoyed me typifies the sort of sloppiness which has entered public discourse these days.  Accuracy, it seems, no longer matters, just so long as you are 'sort of' right.  If you correct it, you are being 'pedantic'.  Except that being accurate isn't the same as being pedantic - and there's a lot of that going on these days and it irritates me just as much.  In large part because the so called pedants, in their zealotry are, more often than not, wrong themselves, all too often relying upon 'literalism' or 'received wisdom' rather than facts.  Indeed, that's the fundamental problem that both sides have - in the eagerness to engage in some spurious 'debate' or other, they fail to carry out even the most cursory of research into the subject in hand.  I mean, these days all it takes is a quick skim through some online resources to tell you everything I outlined earlier about definitions of ships and boats, (although I already knew most of it).  So please, have the courtesy to at least arm yourself with some facts before wading into the fight.  And it is still a ship, not a boat.