I just heard a Fox News half-hour announcer say "John C. Stennis has just left his home port..."

No. John C. Stennis "left his home port," permanently, a dozen years ago. This news story was about a ship. It should have been read, "The John C. Stennis has just left her home port." Yes, I know it sounds strange (particularly given how little gender-driven English is, compared to, say Romance languages or German), but that's how it's done.

Hee hee. News media who know nothing about ships or the military? Noooo! I hope you enjoyed the photo of the captain's chair of a carrier last summer.

Hee hee. News media who know nothing about ships or the military? Noooo! I hope you enjoyed the photo of the captain's chair of a carrier last summer.

Perhaps reporter speaks in Russian idiom!

I thought all ships are referred to by the female pronoun,
"The john C Stennis has left HER homeport" and
"The Ronald Reagan has left HER homeport"

> I thought all ships are referred to by the female pronoun

No, in Russia warships (not civilian vessels) are considered by to be male.

> I thought all ships are referred to by the female pronoun

No, in Russia warships (not civilian vessels) are considered by to be male.

It doesn't sound strange to me -- once I heard the "the" in front of the name, I'd automatically know it was a ship they were talking about.

Russian, incidentally, has six cases but no articles -- no "the" or "a." So in Russian it would be "John C. Stennis has left his home port." They'd probably qualify it with "warship" or something, the way we use "the."

Russian has six noun cases and three genders - masculine, feminine, and neuter. Verbs must agree in gender and number with their subjects, which would communicate the choice of gender for a ship. But in general, grammatical gender in languages that use it like Russian or French is just a grammatical convention, and not an anthropmorphization the way the use of the feminine pronoun is when we speak of ships in English.

Actually US Navy tradition is that "the" is not used before the name of a ship, just as one would not use "the" before teh name of a person. So it would be that "John C. Stennis" has left port, "Missouri" is leaving port, "Enterprise" has arrived etc. And of course "USS" can be tagged on before the name, but still without "the" in front of "USS".

At least they didn't say "John C. Stennis have left their home port."

Is it me, or is this a growing fad? People who decide they want to sound smart will take a proper noun, treat as if it were not a singular collective but a group of independently acting individuals, and thus pair it with a plural verb. I've seen it done in many headlines lately, and it's almost always wrong.

Another aside, I believe the German navy (at least back WWII) refers to warships as he.

I believe the German navy (at least back WWII) refers to warships as he.

As Mark Twain famously pointed out, there is absolutely no rhyme or reason as to how Germans assign gender to nouns.

Is it me, or is this a growing fad?

Chris, this is considered good grammar in England, where a pronoun that Americans would consider singular is used in the plural if it refers to a group of people.

During the World Cup last summer, I heard something like, "Italy have played brilliantly so far..." almost every day.