The frantic, panic-stricken lengths that Defenders of the Myth are forced to go to in their attempts to discredit my work always amuses me, but I was especially entertained by one gentleman who swung into action on Quora. Scarcely able to contain his excitement, he pounced after I remarked that British troops traveled to South Africa ‘by boat’ to fight in the Boer War. Apparently, I should have said ‘by ship’, and according to this rather ludicrous fellow, my off-hand use of this colloquialism was reason enough to dismiss all my research, all my writing, and to label me as being a disreputable and dishonest historian.
It comes to something when the best these utter clowns can come up with is to squeal and scream about my causally using the word ‘boat’ in place of the word ‘ship’; indeed if anything, his hysterical reaction actually proves that my research and referencing is so completely cast-iron, that this is the best he could dredge up[1].
Let’s be honest here: gleefully – and brainlessly – grabbing at this as some sort of ‘Gotcha!’ is every bit as pathetic as someone pretending that Germany didn’t invade ‘France’ in 1940 – oh no – the official name of the nation is the ‘French Republic’,[2] and the fact that someone (colloquially) referred to it as ‘France’ is (apparently) reason enough to dismiss everything else he has written on the subject, and frantically pretend that the invasion never happened. Or something. Anything. Yes, literally anything to deny historical reality.
Anyone who finished school and has a passable degree of fluency in the English language, will know that the word ‘boat’ is – however ‘wrongly’ – often deployed in place of the word ‘ship’ in everyday use.
But don’t take my word for it; this is what Dictionary.com says on the subject:
In casual use, the word boat is often used to refer to any watergoing vessel, regardless of its size or how it’s powered. However, large oceanfaring watercraft—those that use multiple sails or engines—are more properly called ships.
It will probably amaze this buffoon to learn of the famous phrase (and later song title) the ‘slow boat to China’ – presumably he will start squealing that this should be revised to the ‘slow ship to China’? He would also be astounded to learn of ‘boat train’ services. These are rare today, but were common in the golden age of steam trains and liners, with the Cambridge Dictionary defining the service as ‘a train that is planned to reach or leave a port at the right time for passengers who are leaving or arriving on a ship’. Wiki offers a similar definition: ‘A boat train is a passenger train operating to a port for the specific purpose of making connection with a passenger ship, such as a ferry, ocean liner, or cruise ship’.
And yet, no one is screaming that such services should ‘properly’ have been called ‘the ship train’.
On a personal level, I know from growing up in the Shetland Isles that the daily link to Aberdeen is universally known as ‘the boat’[3], despite the vessels which currently operate this route displacing over 11,000 tonnes.[4] Furthermore, I have spent the last 25 years working on the oil rigs, and supply vessels are always referred to as ‘boats’ – no matter their displacement[5].
If only to have kept the pedants calm, I should, of course, have said the troops traveled out on ships, not boats – but does this really matter? It is only ‘wrong’ in the same way that casually referring to ‘America’ instead of ‘the United States of America’ is ‘wrong’. In truth, and though there is obviously a broad acceptance in the English language of a ‘boat’ being smaller than a ‘ship’[6], there is no hard-and-fast definition of when one becomes the other.[7] But if frantically bleating about semantics and colloquialisms is the best the True Believers can come up with to defend their Apartheid-regime myths, then they really are on a sinking ship (or boat?).
NOTES:
[1] It rather reminds me of a ‘review’ of Kruger, Kommandos, and Kak, in which a so-called History Professor tried to dismiss all my research by gleefully squawking about a spelling mistake (‘Colville’ instead of ‘Colvile’ – heinous stuff)
[2] Or, in French, the République française
[3] Actually, ‘da boat’ to Shetlanders
[4] The RMS Dunottar Castle, on which Churchill and Buller travelled out to South Africa on after the Boer invasions, displaced about 5,600 tonnes. The SS Mohawk, on which Buller travelled from Cape Town to Durban, displaced 4,200 tonnes. By way of comparison, a modern-day Royal Navy Type 23 frigate displaces about 4,500 tonnes
[5] Typically, somewhere between 1,000 tonnes and 6,000 tonnes
[6] Or is there? In RN usage, all submarines are ‘boats’, and the biggest RN subs today displace 15,900 tonnes
[7] Sometimes, one will hear the definition ‘a ship can carry a boat, but a boat cannot carry a ship’. This sounds reasonable until one considers that the RN’s ‘Insect’ class gunboats displaced 625 tonnes – no ship of the period was going to be carrying those about
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