The Vikings offered human sacrifices upon launching a new longboat. It is very likely that the wine ceremony used today dates back to the original blood ceremony.
When launching a new longboat Norsemen traditionally offered a human sacrifice to appease the Gods of the Sea, and smeared blood on the bow of the ship. This was considered to be a crucial part of insuring the good fortune of voyages made in that craft. When the North eventually became Christian, it became evident that the Bishops and Priests of their new faith did not approve of this time honored tradition. After what was almost certainly a period of some consternation and adjustment, launching ceremonies replaced the human blood with red wine which was (and still is) often considered, symbolically, to be the blood of Christ himself.
Being that many Danes and other Norsemen had settled in the British Isles, and that they were obviously the experts of the time on all things nautical, it is not at all unusual that this ceremony became firmly a part of British culture. The launch of a new boat was now called “christening” which is a sort of generic term for any sort of inaugural ceremony up to and including the baptism of infants. The word basically means “to bring to Christ”, and sailors, being sailors, kept the ancient pagan ceremony alive with red wine for centuries. In the present time we now use champagne, and score the bottle carefully to avoid damage to our new fiberglass hulls, but many still consider it an absolute necessity to christen new boats of any size.
Of course other ancient cultures besides the Vikings had launching ceremonies as well. The Greeks feasted and drank a lot of wine and called upon Poseidon, and the Romans later changed the name to Neptune. The Muslims prayed fervently to Allah, sacrificed a sheep, and maybe called in the whirling dervishes (if it was at the height of the Ottoman Empire). All these ceremonies have wine or blood, and maybe Greek rationality did what Christianity would later do in the North, and changed the blood to wine.
So when you say words like “To the Sailors of Old” and drink champagne and break a bottle across the bow you may be drinking to the Vikings, and carrying on a tradition with its roots in human sacrifice and pre-Christian superstition. Of course, the modern scientific mind is fully aware that a boat is a boat and those of the same make have an equal chance of success on the waters, champagne ceremony, or not. There won’t be any bad luck if the bottle fails to break or if she slides into the water at a funny angle. Those bad luck rumors are just old wives’ tales. Aren’t they?
Where’s my glass cutter? I have to score this bottle just right.
