boats

[colk100]

how big is a boat before it's a ship?

[Jenny Tools]

Boat -A fairly indefinite term. A waterborne vehicle smaller than a ship. One definition is a small craft carried aboard a ship, so when it's too large to get it on deck it then becomes a ship in it own right.

[colk100]

Thanks for that! But the Mary Rose is a ship and they put that on a ship to bring it back!

[simontarling]

haha !

[Jenny Tools]

The definition was a small craft carried aboard a ship. The Mary Rose was not carried aboard but merely transported.

[Quizmonster]

As JT's answer suggests, there was an old claim that: "You can get a boat on a ship, but you can't get a ship on a boat." This no longer applies, as we saw a year or so ago, when a damaged Royal Navy ship had to be transported back from Australia aboard a salvage-boat).

In fact - with the exception of submarines, which are invariably called boats - all Royal Navy vessels are called ships, regardless of size. (Obviously, I'm referring to HMS This, That or The Other and not to their captain's pinnace - which is a boat - for example, when I say 'vessel'!)

Really, the difference between boat and ship is not a matter of size, specifically, at all.

[Jetwriter]

If you are in the Royal Navy, or involved in naval support, anything that travels on the water's surface is a ship; submarines are all called boats. But a camel having a dip in an Oasis is not a boat of the desert.

[Janetex]

There's a bit more to it than these explanations. I remember having it drummed into me as a child, but drifting off half-way through. There's always the good old OED.

[Quizmonster]

Sadly, Janet, "the good old OED" is no help. It points out that the original meaning of 'boat' was a small, open vessel and of 'ship' a large seagoing vessel. However, the subsidiary meanings listed under each of these head-words make it clear that, in modern usage, size has nothing whatever to do with it.

One of the regulars in my local spent his younger years working on various Castle liners. He invariably calls them "the Castle boats", just as another regular refers to his former work-places as "the Cunard boats". Clearly, these were vastly larger that some Royal Navy minesweeper, yet that will always be called a ship.

Re boats and ships...I don't know about other life-situations!..size truly doesn't matter.

[Merthyr Imp]

To support what Quizmonster has said, when people crossed the Atlantic or went to other places on the great liners such as the Queen Mary the travel was always referred to as 'going on the boat'. The special railway trains that ran from London to Southampton, for example, were always called 'Boat Trains'.

[jamessavory]

This is all very interesting guys! but dose anyone now the answer??

[Janetex]

The answer depends on how much rum you've had. Sadly, Quizzie, my lectures weren't limited to these types of boats, they included the masted sail type.

[willprentice]

i can only respond by asking another question but with a similar principle! When does a peice of string become rope, a stream become a river and a rock become a boulder! And on that note how far can a dog run into the woods?