WHY does she get launched ? A ship, that is.

In other words, why, really, is a ship always a she, and why is she invariably launched with ceremony and usually the traditional bottle of champagne ? Here are the answers, authenticated by the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, to these two sea posers.

First, the oldest custom of the two, the launching ceremony. The practice of smashinga bottle of wine over the bows, the naming by a celebrity, usually a lady, the well-wishing, the religious blessing and the cheers are all of them deeply rooted in history.

The earliest launching ceremonies of all, in ancient times, included human sacrifice and the garlanding of the new vessel with flowers— all to propitiate the gods and bring good fortune.

The Romans and the Greeks had a priest pour water for purification and then oil and wine at an altar on board to signify dedication to the appropriate goddess. But it was the Vikings and certain South Sea islanders who brought human sacrifice as a launching aid to grisly perfection.

They would bind the victim or victims to the log rollers over which the ship slithered down into the sea. It is thought that the very old custom of using red wine, before champagne became the accepted beverage, was symbolic ofthe blood shed in the barbaric earlier rites.

In Tudor times the king's representative would first name a new ship, then drink a goblet of wine, sprinkle more wine over the deck, and finally throw the goblet overboard as an offering to Neptune. In the time of King Charles II the goblet was usually presented as a keepsake to the master shipwright responsible for building the ship, but after about 1690 the custom was dropped.

It was not until the later Hanoverian times that the various earlier customs were condensed into the brief christening and the breaking ofa bottle of wine over the bows. Water was also sometimes used instead.

About 1810 a lady was usually asked to perform the rites: she was generally the wife of some official concerned, as indeed she still often is. Royalty were first asked to perform during the Victorian era, but only for naval vessels; the first merchant vessel to be christened by a member of the British Royal Family was the Union-Castle liner Windsor Castle, launched by the Duke of Windsor, then Prince of Wales, in 1921.

At some period in the seventeenth century, religious associations with launchings seem tohave been dropped and did not reappear until 1875, when a short service dedicated the tug Perseverance at Devonport Dockyard.

Not long afterwards, the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra, had a full ceremony performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury for the battleship, H.M.S. Alexandra. Choral services began in 1896, and religious dedications have been common since then.

Many kinds of wine were and are still used for naming ships, but the so-called traditional champagne is in fact a fairly recent tradition, almost certainly twentieth century. It was probably adopted because of its association with other festivities like weddings and human baptisms.

And once launched, every ship assumes feminine gender and becomes the truly traditional she. Why? Well, it seems just as a term of familiarity, affection and endearment, perhaps encouraged by the original frequency of obviously female figureheads on the ships of old.

In fact, ships have been she for at least 400 years. The earliest known reference to this dates from 1560, when one Thomas Alcock wrote to the agents of the Muscovy Company saying: 'We think it good you should let the smaller ship bring as much of the train as she can carry.' Even the use for several centuries of the expression 'man-of-war' failed to shake mankind's fondness for calling his ships she; and of course the term of endearment has long since been equally happily applied to cars, motor cycles, push bikes, scooters, aircraft, swords, guns and even tanks!.