Talk:US frigate Chesapeake

From WikiPOBia

There is a problem with the naming of this article. The United States does not designate sailing vessels with "USN". Vessels of the United States Navy are designated as USS, which stands for United States Ship. This article should be titled USS Chesapeake. See Wikipedia article USS Chesapeake (1799). Opus 10:28, 4 January 2009 (GMT)

See WikiPOBia talk:Style Manual. I think the salient point is that POB used the designation "USN" for the Chesapeake (perhaps his research revealed that as the actual designation used at the time?) so that is what is used here. Some discussion of this in the article might be appropriate, since this is likely to be a continuing source of confusion. Jblumel 15:06, 4 January 2009 (GMT)

United States Navy prefix "USS"

Hello - I used "USN" when I named the Constitution article because the style manual said to do so ... but your discussion prompted me to look a little further, and I found the following quote from the Naval Historical Center website, at [1].

"Into the early years of the 20th century there was no fixed form for Navy ship prefixes. Ships were rather haphazardly identified, in correspondence or documents, by their naval type (U.S. Frigate ____), their rig (United States Barque ____), or their function (United States Flag-Ship ______). They might also identify themselves as "the Frigate _____," or, simply, "Ship ______." The term "United States Ship," abbreviated "USS," is seen as early as the late 1790s; it was in frequent, but far from exclusive, use by the last half of the 19th century."

The exclusive use of "USS" by the U.S. Navy was apparently not official until an executive order in 1907.

Paulster13 03:47, 5 January 2009 (GMT)

When one googles "USN Chesapeake", the only hits referring to the ship are to this WIKI, so it does not appear to be a common usage. The Navy officially calls this ship the USS Chesapeake.[2] In an online document of the United States Congressional Record from 1820-21, the Chesapeake is referred to as "the frigate C." or "the United States frigate C." with "frigate" in lower-case as a descriptive term rather than part of the formal nomenclature of the ship.[3] I have not yet found a single authoritative reference from any period that uses the "USN" designation. As an American, I can say that the use of the term "USS" for American naval vessels is so widespread and natural as to have the strength of convention. Opus 13:05, 6 January 2009 (GMT)

There are a couple of issues here. First, there are essentially two Chesapeakes: the historical Chesapeake and POB's fictional Chesapeake. While similar in most regards, POB's Chesapeake exists only in the pages of FOW (well, perhaps there is a passing reference in SM, or elsewhere), while the real Chesapeake has a history independent of POB's work. POB apparently referred to the ship as "USN Chesapeake", whereas the real ship was originally simply, as pointed out, "the frigate Chesapeake". One of the goals of this wiki -- this was part of the discussion before WikiPOBia was set up -- is to present information that is accurate to the time, as a means of furthering readers' understanding of POB's work and the period in which it is set. On that basis, I would support renaming (moving) this article to "Chesapeake (ship)" (the disambiguation text to differentiate it from other "Chesapeake" references, and to avoid having to move it once again), without designation, and including a discussion of the designation/name issues in the article. Redirects for both designations can also be created. This should resolve the issue of the article showing up in searches, while maintaining historical and literary accuracy.

It might also be appropriate to create a separate article on Ships' names (or something to that effect) where these issues are discussed in more detail. I would also suggest that we update the style manual to more accurately reflect the purpose and philosophy of WikiPOBia in this regard -- i.e., that the names and designations accurate to the period and POB's fiction are to be preferred over any specific convention expressed there. -- Jblumel 14:42, 6 January 2009 (GMT)