Opinion Trumptastic warships continue a fine tradition

The French word téméraire means “reckless” or “foolhardy”. At the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the British warship HMS Temeraire discovered another shade of meaning, outfighting and capturing two French ships in fierce actions; its name would be immortalised by J M W Turner’s painting, The Fighting Temeraire. From Nelson’s HMS Victory to HMS Warspite to USS Constitution, the legacies and commensurately bombastic names of many historic warships still carry resonance. Other smaller ships such as HMS Pansy and HMS Cockchafer were less ambitious. The range of appropriate names runs the gamut from flowers and insects to heroes and kings. Politicians, too, have found a place in this nomenclatural biome, particularly in the US.

US President Donald Trump has announced a new class of battleships, the Trump class, as part of a naval buildup project with an equally Trumptastic name, the Golden Fleet. While other presidents have had ships named after them, such as USS George H W Bush, they have not been sitting presidents. However, there doesn’t appear to be a USS Donald J Trump in the offing. Although a class of ships normally shares the name of its first ship, the first Trump-class battleship will be USS Defiant.

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The aircraft carrier killed the admirals’ tragic romance with the big-gun battleship in World War II; Trump plans to revive the concept in the form of a “guided-missile battleship”. It’s going to be big, at 840-880 feet long and displacing over 35,000 tons. It’s also going to be “the most lethal warship ever to be built”, trumpets the Golden Fleet website. The wisdom of focusing on such huge, costly surface combatants in today’s context may be questioned. But the naming and description of the Trump class continue a fine naval tradition: Bombast.