ship names?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Edit: hey Steve I wonder do you keep separate lists of which ships are Yanks and which are Tommies? I've considered actually creating two separate shipname files for myself, one that would include the US names and one that didn't. Then I'd just use the "no Yanks" file until after Dec 1941. Please note I'm NOT asking you to create two files for that purpose, I'm just curious if a list of US only ship names is readily available. OTOH I could just take out the ones that are *obviously* US or seem so to me, since if it doesn't seem bloody obvious I'm not gonna know the difference when it shows up in a patrol log.

Give me the name and I can tell you what country it was from, what the real tonnage was and when it entered the war. I have everything separated by country, including Latvian, Estonian and Russian. In the US files I have Chilean, Honduran, Panamanian, you name it.

As for the 'Empires', as IABL said, when the Ministry Of Transport became the Ministry Of War Transport they started purchasing ships, and the ones that they bought or siezed from other nations were all renamed 'Empire' something-or-other. I have a 400-ton tugboat listed that was called Empire Fred.

Ships purchased from the US were named after animals - Empire Ibix, Empire Jaguar, Empire Ocelot, or after weapons - Empire Battleaxe, Empire Mace, Empire Broadsword; except for the Liberties which for some reason were all named 'Sam' - Samcebu, Samcuba, Samtana...

The ships we call the 'Empire Ships' (M35B) were a British-built version of the Liberties, the main difference being the split superstructure. Ones built in Canada were called 'Forts' and 'Parks', depending on the shipyards that built them, and there were a bunch built in America called 'Oceans'. Also some were purchased by individual shipping companies, which is why that list has so many different varieties of names.

Also British home-grown tankers of the 8000-ton class were had interesting names. The diesel ships were named for things that come out of the ground - Empire Amethyst, Empire Gold, Empire Oil, and the steam-powered ones were named for 'peoples' - Empire Celt, Empire Yeoman, etc.

Ships with 'Empire' names numbered in the thousands and spanned every type of ship imaginable, except for warships, of course.