UNLUCKY NAMES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1663, 18 January 1917, Page 4

UNLUCKY NAMES.

NEW SHIPS FOR THE NAVY. So guarded are our secrets that we are not allowed to know even the names of the scores of new ships which are being launched almost every day for the Navy. But it is safe to say that, whatever names are being used, the Admiralty are fighting very shy of those of reptiles. The ill-luck attendant on warships bearing the names of reptiles is almost beyond coincidence. The first of our fast turbine destroyers was the Viper. She was only 312 tons, but had engines of 10,000 horse-power, and could do 35 knots an hour. During naval manoeuvres she ran into fog, struck the rocks off the Channel Islands, and broke into three pieces. Three other Vipers ha,ve now been lost at different times. The Cobra, a similar vessel to

the Yip??, broke her back in the North Sea. Some say that she hit a whale; some that it was merely force of wave and weather.

In 1800 the Serpent, a gunboat, went on the rooks off the north coast of Spain, with'terrible loss of life. The death-roll was 173.

Three other Serpents have been lost at different times, three'Lizards, two Snakes, one Basilisk, and one Crocodile. Does anyone wonder,i then, that even the modern “matelot,” who has fewer superstitions than his predecessors, carefully avoids ships with “snaky” names?