Would it be unlucky to name a ship Britannic now?

Dan Kappes

Dan Kappes

Member
I'm asking because the 1974 disaster film Juggernaut features another ocean liner named the Britannic that gets damaged by several bombs planted on board by a terrorist.

I'm surprised that the fictional ship owners in the film and the real filmmakers who made the film would want to name a new ship the Britannic after a ship with that name who was the ill-fated Titanic's sister ship sank herself in 1916. The movie was filmed on board the TS Maxim Gorkiy. TS Maxim Gorkiy - Wikipedia

But there was a small passenger launch called the New Britannic that was used to ferry soldiers during the Dunkirk evacuation in WWII and which recently re-enacted her famous voyage for Christopher Nolan's 2017 film Dunkirk. I wonder if it was named after the Titanic's ill-fated sister? Little ship has a big role in blockbuster

But I doubt any modern ocean liner or cruise ship would be named Britannic, Olympic, and certainly not Titanic again. Except for that Austrian billionaire I keep hearing about who wants to build a Titanic II.

I also don't think anyone would name a ship Poseidon after the famous ill-fated fictional ship in books and movies and I don't think anyone would want to name a ship after a previous ill-fated vessel like the Andrea Doria and Edmund Fitzgerald. I would feel sorry for the people those ships are named after if they knew that their names were used as the names for ships that ran into trouble! :D

Note: I've made the ship names in this thread bold to make it easier to read.
 
There has even been another Titanic. In the nineties, a small tanker called Daugavpils, after a city in Latvia, was sold and renamed Titanic. She disappeared from Lloyds Register in about 1994. Michael Standart saw her at sea during his naval service.

In the late 19th century there was a freighter called Titanic. She operated quite successfully for many years, so the name is not jinxed.
 
When in Paris years ago I have a photo across the river of a ship in big letter TITANIC. It was the tender ship Nomadic been used as a restaurant at the time.
 
If you really want to make sure your ship sinks, name it Loch Something. See Wikipedia for the ships of the Loch Line. Some of them sank twice.
 
Names are reused over and over again for ships often (if not for eternity), they just don't use names from well known shipwrecks due to the bad publicity behind them.

Funnily enough, I was looking at Lloyd's Weekly Shipping Index for 1912 the other day, and from memory, there were 2 ships called Poseidon and a couple of ships called Titan* or Titania in service at that time.

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*Titan seems to be a very unlucky name as several sail ships have gone down between 1850 - 1900 (someone has supposed this is what inspired Morgan Robertson to name his ship Titan in "Futility")

(Watch between 2:20 - 3:31)

In fact (again from memory), Lloyds stated a ship called Titan had sank in late 1911 - early 1912.
 
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