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，我正在座位上阅读一篇有关工作时上网摸鱼的学术论文时，扫了一眼电脑屏幕，看到有个同事发了一条tweet消息：“没想到这么搞笑。”我点击了里面的链接，看到了一些舰艇的照片，名字都很蠢，例如HMS Gay Viking号、HMS Spanker号、SS Lesbian号、USS Saucy号、SS Iron Knob号。起初我大笑不止，不过当我看到HMS Cockchafer号和HMS Grappler号时，我想：“不会吧？”于是我开始查阅维基百科(Wikipedia)，发现HMS Cockchafer号是第五艘使用这个名称的英国皇家海军(Royal Navy)舰艇，该艇建造于1915年，在一战中曾保卫过英国东南海岸，还参加过英苏入侵伊朗行动。