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Show Why We Christen Boats. The modern custom of christening vessels is without doubt an adaptation of an ancient custom, just as so many of our other customs and habits have been adapted from ancient ones. The ancients used to place the image of a titular deity at the stern of their vessels, in the tutela, or shrine. Do you remember that the boat mentioned men-tioned in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Acts, the boat that carried Paul from Malta to Rome, was "under the sign of Castor and Pollux?" It was, so says Acts. The ceremony of breaking a bottle of wine on the bow of a new vessel as it is launched is another ancient adapted custom. For the ancients offered of-fered a libation to Neptune or Fosei-don, Fosei-don, who ruled the seas, as they launched their boats. |