One day last week I was sitting at my desk reading an academic paper on cyber loafing when I glanced at my screen and saw a colleague had tweeted: “This shouldn’t be funny but it is.” I clicked on the link and found a series of pictures of ships with silly names. There was HMS Gay Viking, HMS Spanker, SS Lesbian, USS Saucy, SS Iron Knob. At first I laughed but, as I read on to HMS Cockchafer and HMS Grappler, I thought: surely not? Thus I found myself checking on Wikipedia and discovering HMS Cockchafer was the fifth Royal Navy ship of that name, that it was built in 1915, defended the southeast coast of England during the first world war and was later part of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.
上星期的一天，我正在座位上閱讀一篇有關工作時上網摸魚的學術論文時，掃了一眼電腦螢幕，看到有個同事發了一條tweet訊息：「沒想到這麼搞笑。」我點擊了裏面的鏈接，看到了一些艦艇的照片，名字都很蠢，例如HMS Gay Viking號、HMS Spanker號、SS Lesbian號、USS Saucy號、SS Iron Knob號。起初我大笑不止，不過當我看到HMS Cockchafer號和HMS Grappler號時，我想：「不會吧？」於是我開始查閱維基百科(Wikipedia)，發現HMS Cockchafer號是第五艘使用這個名稱的英國皇家海軍(Royal Navy)艦艇，該艇建造於1915年，在一戰中曾保衛過英國東南海岸，還參加過英蘇入侵伊朗行動。