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A web search on "champagne ship launch" resulted in a wonderful but sadly incomplete pamphlet from the U.S. Naval Historical Center called Ships of the United States Navy: Christening, Launching and Commissioning by retired Vice Admiral E.B. Hooper. This PDF document (you'll have to download it) is also notable for a fantastic photograph of Betty Ford smashing the heck out of a champagne bottle on a nuclear submarine. Christening a new ship with wine or holy water has obvious religious overtones, but the practice pre-dates Christianity. A Babylonian narrative from the third millennium BC replaces a bottle of Dom with a couple of heifers:
Openings to the water I stopped;
I searched for cracks and the wanting parts I fixed:
Three sari of bitumen I poured over the outside;
To the gods I caused oxen to be sacrificed
The practice of breaking a bottle of wine over a ship's bow was introduced by the British navy in the late 17th century as a cost saving measure! Previously the ships were baptized with a "standing cup" of precious metal, which was then promptly thrown overboard. The rapid production of ships during the height of the British Empire put an end to that. Why champagne over wine? We couldn't find a specific answer, but champagne has always been closely tied to new births, new years, and celebration in general. It's also a secular beverage with no religious strings attached. And it looks
great flying around everywhere.
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