I’ve been doing a lot of traveling, so for today’s Friday fun fact, I thought I’d look into a travel and transportation ritual that involves wine. And no, I’m not talking about the first-class pre-departure beverage (unfortunately!).
Now, ship christenings are nothing new Ancient peoples including the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans all held ceremonial ship launches asking the gods to protect sailors and offering up everything from wine to oxen to humans. Luckily that has lately been discontinued.
Why exactly do we use champagne to christen ships? Watch that splash back! Photo source: Naval Historical Foundation.
In Medieval Europe clergymen would often board new ships and bless them using holy water. During the Reformation, this practice apparently fell out of favor, especially in England, and instead, members of the nobility, royalty or military leaders would drink from a ceremonial goblet (usually wine or a spirit) and call the ship by its name for the first time before pouring out the liquid and tossing the ceremonial cup overboard.
So why wine, and in particular champagne? As Britain’s navy grew, tossing fancy cups overboard every time they built a ship got to be too expensive. So instead, the British adopted the practice of breaking a bottle of wine over the ship’s bow around the end of the 17th century. Eventually, as champagne became the beverage of choice among the fashionable set, it also became the favored kind of wine to smash over ships in the 19th century. Plus, its fizz makes for quite the show when that bottle breaks. However, other liquids including wine, whiskey and just plain seawater are still sometimes used (and the US actually sanctioned the use of water, juice or cider instead during Prohibition).
The only thing is, you might remember from my post on champagne that it can have up to 90 pounds per square inch of pressure inside, so those bottles have to be extraordinarily strong. That’s why you might find it particularly interesting to watch the bottle-breaker’s face during a christening because they’ve really got to swing it!
Michelle Obama uses those famous arms to christen a Coast Guard ship. Photo source: New Pittsburgh Courier.
Some people cheat a bit by scoring the glass beforehand so that the bottle is sure to break. After all, it’s considered bad luck if the bottle does not. But that’s not always the case. The USS Maine, which blew up in Havana’s harbor in 1898 and sparked the Spanish-American War, was christened successfully with a champagne bottle in 1890, while the undefeated USS Constitution was christened using a bottle of Madeira (the Founding Fathers’ drink of choice) back in 1797. And if you’re wondering, the Titanic wasn’t christened at all. The White Star Line didn’t christen any of their ships. Maybe that was the problem.
Regardless, don’t go breaking any wine bottles this weekend, unless you’re christening a ship, of course, in which case I hope it’s smooth sailing ahead!
