Re: Why are ships,trains,etc. referred to as 'she'?

There is a one-word answer to your question: tradition!

Nobody really knows the origin of this English usage, though I'm sure
there are some guesses.

In a language with grammatical genders, nouns take the pronoun appropriate to 
the gender (masculine, feminine or neuter). In German, "der Schiff" is 
masculine and a ship is "he"; in Italian, "la barca" is feminine.

But modern English does not have grammatical genders.

                                   Dan Berger
                                   MadSci Administrator