Ship Launching - the ceremony

[Peter]

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ceremony and religion had always played a part, in the launching of ships, with the monarch attending the launch of many of the larger ships. In fact, the launching of a ship is now referred to as the ‘launching ceremony’. Facts on the launching ceremonies are sketchy for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Moreover, ceremonies did not tend to be formalized until the nineteenth century. There were bands, and entertainment, and religious prayers were said, but there was no order of service for the ceremony.
One of the earliest records of ship naming is documented at the launch of The Prince Royal, at Woolwich, in September 1610, in the autobiography of Phineas Pett:

...The Lord Admiral, attended by the Principal Officers of the Navy together with myself, received him on land out of his barge…When it grew towards high water and all things ready, and a great close lighter made fast at the ship’s stern, and the Queen Majesty with her train placed, the Lord Admiral [King] gave me commandment to heave taut the crabs [small capstan] and screws, [placed at the bows to start the ship] though I had little hope to launch by reason the wind over-blew the tide; yet the ship started and had launched, but the dock gates pent her in so strait that she struck fast between them…there was no possibility of launching that tide…The noble Prince [Henry] himself, accompanied with the Lord Admiral and other great Lords, were upon the poop, where the great standing gilt cup was ready filled with wine to name the ship, so she had been on float, according to the ancient custom and ceremony performed at such times, by drinking part of the wine, giving the ship her name, and heaving the standing cup overboard....

Pett would have been extremely honoured to have received the standing cup from the King, as it was custom to throw it overboard.
The custom of breaking a bottle of wine over the stem of a ship when being launched originates from the old practice of toasting prosperity to the ship in a silver goblet of wine, which was then cast into the sea in order to prevent a toast of ill intent being drunk from the same cup. This practice proved too expensive and so was replaced in 1690 by the breaking of a bottle of wine over the stem. Another old custom which is still observed is to pray for Divine blessing on the ship and her company throughout her life.

Until 1811, the ceremony for H.M. ships was always performed by a royal personage or a Royal Dockyard Commissioner, but in that year, the Prince Regent introduced the custom of allowing ladies to perform it. It is interesting to note that on one subsequent occasion a certain lady missed her aim with the bottle, which struck and injured a spectator who sued the Admiralty for damages, and this resulted in the Admiralty directing that in future the bottle should be secured to the ship by a lanyard.

Religious ceremonies at the launch of Royal Navy warships were not standardised until 1874.

[PMarione]

Ship launching was a very dangerous operation besides the danger of being hit by the bottle.
At the time shipbuilding was not a science and there was always the risk of an accident like the one described in Robert Dhery's le petit baigneur (The Little Bather).
The most famous is the foundering of the Wasa, even if it was not during the launching.

[Peter]

The Northumberland was built by Messrs Mare and Co., the predecessors of the Millwall Shipbuilding Company; her keel being laid on the bank of the Thames near that of the Minotaur in the same year 1861. But whereas the latter was only two years in hand before launching, the former was five; partly on account of frequent alterations in details of design, and partly because she carried to a much further stage of completion on the stocks.

This imposed so great an additional weight on the cradle and launching ways as nearly to lead to irretrievable disaster; and few ships have begun their career in more inauspicious fashion, especially before so distinguished a gallery of spectators, including many Cabinet Ministers and large parties from both Houses of Parliament. For an hour after the dog-shores were knocked away she refused to budge, and meanwhile the tide has started to ebb.

That was bad enough, but far worse followed when at last she slid half-way down and there stuck with her after part hanging not waterborne and threatening to break her back. For exactly a month suspended thus in spite of ceaseless efforts to make her move…[the] manufacture of large timber pontoons for lashing under her quarters by chain cables at low tide; and to shoring her up while the cradle was strengthened under her weight. A first effort to get her afloat at the next spring tides a fortnight later had no success, though a whole flotilla of tugs were hauling at her stern.

But at the next spring tides again an exceptionally high river gave the necessary lift to the pontoons, and she finally left the bank with a rush that threatened to carry away all the checking appliances, but was eventually brought up by good luck. As all the lower Thames region was interested and excited over the whole affair the crowds along the waterside were even huger than on the proper launching day, and according to The Times the enthusiasm was indescribable when she took the water at last….

Admiral G.A. Ballard. The Black Battlefleet, (Nautical Publishing & SNR, 1980), p.38